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White Privilege: Exploring the (in)visibility of Pakeha whiteness
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Masters of Arts in Human Services at the
University of Canterbury
By Claire Frances Gray
Human Services Programme School of Social and Political Sciences
University of Canterbury 2012
Contents Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................................... 1
Abstract ................................................................................................................................................................. 2
Chapter 1 .............................................................................................................................................................. 3
Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................ 3
A New Zealand Context ............................................................................................................................. 5
Adoption of a Critical Stance ................................................................................................................... 7
Thesis Overview ........................................................................................................................................... 8
A Note on Writing Style .......................................................................................................................... 10
Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................................................................... 12
Literature Review .......................................................................................................................................... 12
A Pakeha Identity ...................................................................................................................................... 13
A Pakeha identity and whiteness .................................................................................................. 15
Race and Racism in New Zealand ....................................................................................................... 16
White Privilege .......................................................................................................................................... 20
White privilege in New Zealand ..................................................................................................... 20
The origins of white privilege ......................................................................................................... 22
The Invisibility of Whiteness and Privilege ................................................................................... 25
Development of the Research Question .......................................................................................... 28
Chapter 3 ........................................................................................................................................................... 31
Methodology .................................................................................................................................................... 31
Sampling Method ...................................................................................................................................... 32
The participants .................................................................................................................................... 33
Data Gathering ........................................................................................................................................... 34
Face-to-face interviews. .................................................................................................................... 35
Email interview ..................................................................................................................................... 35
Active Interviewing .................................................................................................................................. 36
Insider/Outsider Research ................................................................................................................... 37
Reflexivity .................................................................................................................................................... 40
Data Analysis .............................................................................................................................................. 41
Thematic analysis. ............................................................................................................................... 41
Discourse analysis. .............................................................................................................................. 42
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 43
Chapter 4 ........................................................................................................................................................... 45
A Pakeha Relationship with Maori ......................................................................................................... 45
Connection with Maori ........................................................................................................................... 46
Rejection of Europe. ............................................................................................................................ 46
Creating a relationship with Maori. .............................................................................................. 49
Belonging in New Zealand. ............................................................................................................... 52
The “Empty Alterity” of a Pakeha Identity ..................................................................................... 54
Not Maori. ................................................................................................................................................ 54
Pakeha = white? .................................................................................................................................... 56
The Appropriation of the Term Pakeha ........................................................................................... 57
A Consideration of Power ...................................................................................................................... 59
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 60
Chapter 5 ........................................................................................................................................................... 62
The Reification of Whiteness .................................................................................................................... 62
Interpretations of Whiteness ............................................................................................................... 62
Dislike of the word ‘white’................................................................................................................ 63
Reification of whiteness .................................................................................................................... 64
Resistance to race. ............................................................................................................................... 65
Whiteness in New Zealand .................................................................................................................... 67
White cultural capital ......................................................................................................................... 68
White culture as “no culture”. ......................................................................................................... 70
White culture as “bad culture”........................................................................................................ 71
Justifying a Pakeha Identity .................................................................................................................. 73
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 76
Chapter 6 ........................................................................................................................................................... 77
White Privilege ............................................................................................................................................... 77
Disengagement from Personal Privilege ......................................................................................... 78
The discourse of racism ..................................................................................................................... 78
Disinclination to talk about personal privilege ....................................................................... 80
Separation from other white people ............................................................................................ 84
Reflexive race cognizance. ................................................................................................................ 86
Institutional Privilege ............................................................................................................................. 87
Education ................................................................................................................................................. 88
Homeownership ................................................................................................................................... 89
Health ........................................................................................................................................................ 90
The justice system ............................................................................................................................... 90
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 92
Chapter 7 ........................................................................................................................................................... 94
Separation from Other White People .................................................................................................... 94
Separation via a Pakeha Identity ........................................................................................................ 94
A political separation .......................................................................................................................... 96
The Prejudice Problematic .................................................................................................................... 99
The Heterogeneity of Whiteness? .................................................................................................... 102
Whiteness as Social Collectivism ...................................................................................................... 105
White Culture and Power ............................................................................................................... 107
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 109
Chapter 8 ......................................................................................................................................................... 110
Conclusion and Implications ................................................................................................................... 110
Thesis Overview ...................................................................................................................................... 110
My own Pakeha Identity ...................................................................................................................... 115
Research Limitations ............................................................................................................................. 118
Implications............................................................................................................................................... 119
Appendices ..................................................................................................................................................... 121
Appendix A: Consent Form for Participants ............................................................................... 122
Appendix B: Information Sheet for Participants ....................................................................... 123
Appendix C: Interview Question Guide...................................................................................... 124
Appendix D: Transcription Code ...................................................................................................... 126
Appendix E: Ethics Approval Letter ............................................................................................ 127
References ...................................................................................................................................................... 129
1
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my supervisors Jim Anglem and Dr Nabila Jaber for their
ongoing support and encouragement and to Dr Annabel Taylor and Nikki
Evans for their insightful comments.
I am particularly grateful for the contribution of the interview participants
and to Katherine Peet from Network Waitangi Otautahi for introducing me
to many of these participants. I also wish to acknowledge the economic
assistance provided by the University of Canterbury Masters' Scholarship.
Finally I am grateful for the constant support from my husband and family
without which I could never have completed this work.
2
Abstract
Drawing upon critical whiteness theory I examine whiteness and privilege
within a New Zealand context, specifically with 15 men and women who
self identify as Pakeha. Through in-depth interviews I explore the
proposition that the adoption of this identity may preclude an
understanding of the ways that whiteness and privilege operate.
Employing thematic and discourse analysis, four major themes were
identified within the data. The functionality and organisation of language
is considered in order to examine participants’ detachment from dominant
white culture. The thesis illustrates that the assumption of a Pakeha self
identity may allow the bearer to discursively obscure both the cultural
capital that whiteness provides and the privileges afforded by this capital.
Ultimately, this research draws attention to the intersection of privilege
and whiteness within New Zealand, in order to offer one explanation for
the persistence of white hegemony.
3
Chapter 1
Introduction
The preoccupation of this study is white privilege: the concept that those
of us who are white have at our disposal a number of unearned advantages
that enable us to live our lives with greater ease than many non whites. In
one of the most widely cited pieces of writing on the subject, Peggy
McIntosh (1988) presented a list of privileges, that she had access to
simply because of her skin colour. Many white people, she contended, do
not acknowledge these advantages and the ways in which the institutions
which constitute Western society privilege members of the dominant
white majority.
Racism in Western countries is regularly interpreted in terms of prejudice
against non whites. McIntosh (1988) instead redefined this issue as
privilege, arguing that society provides greater opportunities to white
people by disadvantaging those who are not. Being oblivious to these
privileges, she contends, sustains a belief in the superiority of a white way
of life. By emphasising the previously unacknowledged relationship
between non white disadvantage and white advantage, she highlighted the
underlying attitudes that accompany white racism. Understanding this
connection between an ideology of white superiority and the persistence
of racism was a concern of mine throughout this research.
4
I arrived at the topic of white privilege from a number of different routes.
The experience of living outside of New Zealand in a non Western country
introduced me to a way of life that was not white. Experiencing life as a
racial minority presented a challenge to my inherent belief in the
superiority of my own culture. Talking to those who had spent time as
foreigners in New Zealand however, I began to realise that my struggle to
come to terms with the shock of encountering a foreign culture bore little
resemblance to the debilitating racism experienced by many non white
immigrants in my home country.
New Zealand has been described in the literature as a country in which the
values and beliefs of other cultures are tolerated only within a context of
white Western superiority (Awatere, 1984; Consedine & Consedine, 2005;
2009; Ministerial Advisory Committee on a Maori Perspective for the
Department of Social Welfare, 1986). The resulting racism is predicated
upon a hierarchy with white Western culture sitting uncontested at its
pinnacle. Recently, I saw this attitude overwhelmingly demonstrated by
many white people I knew when, following my sister’s hospitalisation in a
city in South East Asia, they questioned the quality of care she would
receive in a modern, highly industrialised but non Western city.
The “insider insights” (McCreanor, 2005, p. 64), that I bring to this
research as a white New Zealander give this reaction, with its underlying
inference of the superiority of white Western culture, “a disconcerting
level of familiarity”. I use the term “as a white New Zealander” not in
order to reify this identity by suggesting that all white people in New
Zealand share a particular “moral failing” (Bonnett, 2000b, p. 128), but
rather to emphasise my appreciation of these reservations. In the same
way as Jensen (2005) expresses anger at himself for understanding why a
racist joke is funny, I am irritated as much by my own identification with
these reservations as by hearing them expressed by my friends. I too see
the relationship between the words “’European’, ‘white’, ‘Westerner’,
5
‘developed’ and ‘advanced’” (Bonnett, 2000b, p. 142). It is my uneasiness
with this relationship that motivated me to understand more about white
privilege and ultimately led me to this thesis topic.
A New Zealand Context
In deciding how to contextualise a discussion of white privilege in New
Zealand, I was drawn to the debate surrounding the adoption of the word
Pakeha by a group of white New Zealanders as an expression of self
identity. Ballara (1986, p. 203) defines the word Pakeha as the “Maori
name for Europeans”. This is also supported by a number of
contemporary Maori sources which translate the term as white or New
Zealander of European descent (Moorfield, 2011; Ngata & Ngata, 2010).
Despite its origin being contested in the popular imagination, the most
prevalent academic argument for its derivation, is that it originated from
“pakepakeha” meaning fantasy creatures with pale skin (Hepi, 2008;
Hiroa, 1922; King, 1991). It was used by Maori to describe those settlers
with white skin from the time of European contact. Adoption of the term
Pakeha as a self descriptor began to gain popularity in New Zealand during
the 1970s and 1980s and its usage has continued to grow since that time.
During the 2006 census, 8,500 white New Zealanders chose to ignore the
tick box of New Zealand European and instead opted to write the word
Pakeha in the ‘other’ category of the ethnicity question (Treliving as cited
in Irwin, 2010). It seems likely that a larger number would however have
chosen Pakeha if that option had been open to them. A study by Liu
(1999) found that 20-35% of white New Zealanders used this word to
describe their ethnicity, while an earlier study suggested that 16.5%
always or often described themselves as Pakeha (Pearson & Sissons,
1997). Based on current population statistics this indicates that anywhere
6
from 400,000 to 800,000 New Zealanders have a preference for self
identifying in this way.
The adoption of the term by these people is not without controversy. Many
white New Zealanders explicitly refuse to be identified in this way.
Opposition to the term comes in a number of forms. Some simply prefer to
be called something else, some oppose it because they do not like to be
labelled, and some reject it on the basis that it is a word from the Maori
language (Bell, 1996; Gibson, 2006; Liu, 2005; Pearson & Sissons, 1997;
Spoonley, 1988). Others, influenced by what Pearson and Sissons (1997,
p. 69) refer to as “a great New Zealand myth”, object to the term because
they believe the word to be derogatory meaning “white pig” or “white
flea”.
Research suggests that in choosing to be Pakeha, members of this group
may feel they are making a political statement - an expression of support
for Maori and against racism - that may not be shared by other white New
Zealanders (Gibson, 2006; Hepi, 2008; Liu, 2005; Spoonley, 1995a, 1995b;
Spoonley & Larner, 1995). In response to the politicisation of the term
however, several writers have suggested that assuming a Pakeha identity
may actually reproduce racism by allowing the bearer to avoid any
association with the contentious issues of whiteness and privilege (Dyson,
1996; Lawn, 1994).
This latter position suggested a way for me to situate the topic of white
privilege within New Zealand. Taking the Maori meaning of the word
Pakeha (white or European) as a starting point, I was interested in its
evolution over time to the point that this original meaning may now have
little relevance for the people who use it to describe themselves. It is this
newly constructed meaning vis á vis the research participants’
interpretation of what it means to be white that was examined over the
course of this research. Key to my analysis was the argument inherent in
7
critical whiteness theory, that in order to understand the manifestations of
white privilege, it is first necessary to interrogate whiteness.
Adoption of a Critical Stance
In the tradition of a number of New Zealand and international writers who
have written about the dominant white majority, I have assumed a critical
stance in relation to the data and its analysis (M. Anderson, 2003; Bell,
2004, 2006, 2009; Bonnett, 2000b; Hughey, 2007, 2009; Jensen, 2005;
Jones, 1999, 2001). In New Zealand, Bell (2004, 2006, 2009)
demonstrated this approach as she examined the motivations of the
dominant majority in relation to white guilt, settler identity and
biculturalism. She concluded that without critical reflection, the words
and actions of white people can sustain the continued dominance of the
white majority through “the avoidance of engagement and responsibility”
(Bell, 2004, p. 90).
In the United States, Hughey (2007, p. 73) notes that research with white
antiracists can be separated into two types, “celebration ...or critique”. In
assuming the latter position his research was able to demonstrate that
racism may not only be present in an environment of antiracism, but may
actually be created out of it in contexts in which the full implications of
“the lived experiences of white supremacy” may not be grasped (Hughey,
2007, p. 98).
Bonnet (2000b) and M. Anderson (2003) likewise argued that for white
antiracists, a critical stance is necessary to continually assess the
effectiveness of antiracist strategy. M. Anderson (2003, p. 33) writes; “I
have no doubt that self-criticism must accompany white people’s antiracist
work. Too often white progressives leave their own attitudes and
behaviours unexamined while working against racism”. Within a New
Zealand context, Jaber (1998) has argued that a failure by white New
8
Zealanders to critically consider the power relationships inherent in a
bicultural identity may reinforce white hegemony. Liu’s (2005, p. 79)
description of those identifying as Pakeha as the “best allies Maori have”
furthermore encouraged me to consider the possibility that racism may
inadvertently be reinforced by, as McIntosh (1988) maintained, a failure
to see the manifestations of whiteness and privilege and the consequent
reinforcing of an attitude of white superiority.
Thesis Overview
My aim in this thesis then is to examine whiteness and white privilege
within a New Zealand context specifically with a group of people who self
identify as Pakeha. The research question I seek to answer is: what is the
relationship between the usage of the word “Pakeha” by some white New
Zealanders and their understanding of their own whiteness and white
privilege? I begin with the assumption that such a thing as white privilege
exists and shapes the lives of both white and non white people in New
Zealand today. While in Chapter Six, I offer evidence to support this claim,
the concern of this thesis is not to argue for its presence but rather to offer
an explanation for its persistence.
In Chapter Two, I review the literature, laying out a framework for the
thesis and drawing together the scholarship that had a significant
influence on my thinking. It begins with the literature relating to Pakeha
identity, moving to a discussion of race in New Zealand, through to white
privilege and the invisibility of whiteness as presented in both New
Zealand and international literature. The chapter ends with a description
of how I arrived at the research question. It is followed in Chapter Three
by an explanation of the methodology used and ontological position
assumed in order to construct the argument that answers this question.
9
In Chapters Four, Five and Six I examine three of the four themes to
emerge during data analysis; a Pakeha relationship with Maori, the
reification of whiteness and a disengagement from privilege. While
distinct in their focus, these chapters flow into each other as recurring
topics emerged in the data. In attempting to understand the meaning the
participants attached to the word Pakeha, it became apparent that many
were very uncomfortable with the term white. In examining the meaning
participants had constructed around the word white, it emerged that many
saw whiteness and privilege as having little role in their identity as
Pakeha.
Instead I argue that for some participants, a detachment from the
dominant white culture obscures both the cultural capital that whiteness
provides and the privileges afforded by this capital. The ultimate effect of
this is highlighted in Chapter Six as the data revealed that participants
were often able to grasp the theoretical concept of white privilege without
understanding the ways it manifested itself in their own lives. This
supports one of the key premises in the literature; that privilege will
remain hidden as long as whiteness remains an unacknowledged and
invisible norm (Colvin, 2009; Dei, Karumanchery, & Karumanchery-Luik,
2004; Dyer, 1997; Frankenberg, 1993; Gibson, 2006; hooks, 1997;
McIntosh, 1988; Morrison, 1992; Sue, 2004a, 2004b).
In Chapter Seven I analyse the fourth and most dominant theme to emerge
in the data, that of separation. This theme emerged in relation to each of
the topics highlighted in Chapters Four, Five and Six as participants sought
to distance themselves from other white people, from the dominant white
culture in New Zealand and from privilege. This separation, I argue is
achieved through a number of rhetorical devices, not least assuming a
Pakeha identity and emphasising the limitations of other groups of white
New Zealanders. Analysis of these devices forms the basis of my argument
that in creating a sense of separation from other white people, Pakeha are
10
in fact making their own whiteness and privilege harder to see. The
implications of this are discussed in the final chapter of the thesis.
A Note on Writing Style
Throughout this thesis I have opted to use the terms “dominant majority”,
“dominant white majority”, or “white New Zealanders” to refer to white
people who live in New Zealand. The use of a single word such as Pakeha
or European would no doubt have improved my writing style but, I chose
not to do so despite the realisation that it may, at times, have resulted in a
clumsier manner of expression. I made this choice for a number of
reasons. Firstly, as I have elected to study a group of New Zealanders who
refer to themselves as Pakeha in order to differentiate themselves from
those who do not, I felt it would have created confusion to refer to all
white New Zealanders as Pakeha. On the other hand, the term European,
has been deliberately rejected by many who identify as Pakeha and I
believed that employing it, could create an unnecessary distraction by
distancing those who identify as Pakeha from the implications of my
argument. In order to remain consistent with my thesis argument, I chose
to employ terms that both unequivocally encompass all white people in
New Zealand while at the same time emphasising the dominant position
this group occupies in this country.
Finally, by focusing on whiteness and privilege, it is not my intention to
argue that other factors do not also have a significant role to play in
determining the inequalities that exist in New Zealand society. While I
believe that it is important to acknowledge what is gained from being
white in New Zealand, I also maintain that any individual privilege should
be considered within the broader context of societal advantage or
disadvantage (Bonnett, 2000b). That being said however, I contend that
while factors such as socioeconomic status, gender, sexuality or disability
11
may impact the degree to which individual white people can access
privilege, on some level every white person in New Zealand benefits from
the colour of their skin.
12
Chapter 2
Literature Review
In order to organise a piece of research examining white privilege as it is
understood by a group of white New Zealanders, I have drawn together
several threads of writing that take the dominant white majority as a
focus. I begin with the literature that started to emerge in New Zealand
during the 1980s as a number of writers from the dominant majority
began to explore the concept of a Pakeha identity. My intention here is to
highlight the different meanings attached to being Pakeha in order to
understand where whiteness sits in relation to this. While several writers
engaged with the idea of Pakeha hegemony, in the main this work did not
focus on whiteness, instead choosing to privilege a discussion of ethnicity
over race.
In contrast the scholarship which forms the remaining two threads, white
privilege and the invisibility of whiteness, emphasises the benefits
associated with whiteness. In New Zealand a number of writers have
examined the loss of Maori land in relation to its effect on traditional
structures of Maori society, arguing that the undermining of these
structures contributed to the deprivation that Maori faced in colonial
times and that many still face today. Less common however, is writing
concerned with the benefits accruing to white people as a result of the
acquisition of this land. While the local literature which takes white
privilege as its focus is not extensive, it draws attention to the economic
13
and social advantages that colonisation has provided to white people in
contemporary New Zealand. Given the paucity of scholarship in this area
it was also necessary to turn to the international literature on whiteness
and privilege in order to establish a critical framework for this study. The
section concludes with a review of this literature which grounds white
privilege firmly within an historical context, demonstrating contemporary
privilege as the cumulative effect of past events and past and present
government policies.
The final stream of scholarship with which I engage in this review is that
highlighting the invisibility of whiteness to white people. This invisibility,
it is argued, enables white people in many Western countries to ignore the
asset that their skin colour provides. In engaging with this literature my
intention is to argue that in order to understand the practical advantages
we have gained through living in a “white New Zealand system [that] was
designed for whites” (Awatere, 1984, p. 20), it is first necessary to
acknowledge that we are white.
A Pakeha Identity
New Zealand historian Michael King (1985) was among the first to explore
the idea of a Pakeha identity in what he termed his “ethnic autobiography”,
Being Pakeha. A sense of belonging in this country is stressed throughout
his writing. He claimed that, like other Pakeha, he has “no other home”,
and so, like Maori, belongs in New Zealand (King, 1985, p. 177). A Pakeha
identity is created from this sense of belonging and through interaction
with Maori. The term Pakeha, he contended, is the most appropriate way
of describing those non Maori New Zealanders who were born in this
country, have roots here and have an awareness, at least to some degree,
of Maori people and their culture.
14
King’s (1985) work emerged during a period of significant interest in the
term Pakeha. Debates on what it meant to be Pakeha occupied the arts,
mainstream media (Jesson, 1986; King, 1991), and academic attention
(Lawn, 1994; Spoonley, 1986).1 This interest culminated in King (1991)
editing a collection of writing on the topic of a Pakeha identity. In his own
contribution to the work he again emphasised the relationship that Pakeha
have with this country and with Maori, stating that using the term Pakeha
“denotes things that belong to New Zealand via one major stream of its
heritage: people, manners, values and customs that are not exclusively
Polynesian” (King, 1991 p. 16). His definition was echoed by a number of
the other contributors who also defined the term as demonstrating a sense
of belonging in this country and an engagement with Maori culture (see for
example contributions by: Dann, 1991; Olssen, 1991; Spoonley, 1991).
While incorporating this definition Spoonley (1995a, 1995b) and Spoonley
and Larner (1995) moved the debate forward to one that sought to define
Pakeha as a political group. Like King (1985, 1991) they argued that to be
Pakeha emerges from a relationship with, and to, New Zealand and Maori.
They, however, also emphasised the importance of acknowledging the
effects of colonisation and “a set of politics which affirm the centrality of
resolving Treaty claims and of endorsing tino rangatiritanga” (Spoonley,
1995a, p. 54). From this perspective the term represents a deliberately
constructed identity utilised by New Zealanders of European descent who
want to express their understanding of, and support for, post-colonialism.
In this respect then, claiming a Pakeha ethnicity becomes a political
statement.
Avril Bell (1996) also emphasised this position but argued that a focus on
belonging should not be an attempt to incorporate indigeneity for white
New Zealanders, as King (1985, 1991) had attempted, nor should a post-
1 In Spring 1986 a special edition of Sites: A Journal for Radical Perspectives of Culture was dedicated to the subject of Pakeha ethnicity
15
colonial identity imply, as Spoonley’s (1995b) definition had, that Pakeha,
like Maori were also colonised. Her call for Pakeha “self reflection” and an
acknowledgement of our cultural origins encouraged a critical approach to
the subject which was a marked departure from much of the earlier
scholarship on the subject (Bell, 1996; 2006, p. 253). Similarly Jennifer
Lawn (1994, p. 295) was unsympathetic towards what she termed a
“Pakeha renaissance”. She argued that attempts to define a Pakeha
ethnicity had produced little more than “lyrical memories of boyhood
fishing expeditions with the Maori kid next door” (Lawn, 1994, p. 303).
Using a similar rhetoric to feminists who criticised the modern day men’s
movement for directing attention away from issues relating to women,
Lawn (1994, p. 299) warned Pakeha against becoming self absorbed in
this process, “los[ing] sight of their own privilege and neglect[ing] to
evaluate the effectiveness of their own anti-racist tactics”.
Lawn’s (1994) contribution to the debate on Pakeha ethnicity is
significant, not only in her attempt to direct the debate towards issues of
privilege but also in the attention she gave to whiteness. She proposed
that a Pakeha identity can become a means to evade the negative
associations that whiteness has increasingly begun to acquire in Western
society. This stance was reiterated by Dyson (1996) who argued that the
term provided members of the dominant white majority with a discursive
means to avoid discussions of the privileges associated with being white.
A Pakeha identity and whiteness. Indeed for many writers the position of
whiteness in relation to a Pakeha identity is ambiguous. While musician
Chris Knox (1991, p. 187) argued that being Pakeha means being white
and consequently enjoying greater opportunities from New Zealand
institutions, in the main, whiteness as a subject is either dismissed or
ignored. King (1985, p. 12), made his position on whiteness very clear in
16
the opening pages of his earlier work arguing that it had “no meaning in
the New Zealand context”. The terms black and white are irrelevant, he
claimed, to both New Zealand and New Zealanders. Their irrelevance is
emphasised by the absence of all reference to the terms in his later work,
Pakeha: The Quest for Identity in New Zealand; an omission echoed in the
writing of the majority of other contributors to this book (King, 1991).
Those few writers who chose to engage with whiteness were often
dismissive of its role in informing a Pakeha identity. In a special edition of
the Journal Sites entitled “Being Pakeha”, only Shannon (1986) and Motus
(1986) made the connection, but the association is uncomfortable,
particularly for Shannon (1986) who rejected a Pakeha identity because of
it. Pearson (1989), while engaging with an idea of Pakeha hegemony and
including dominance in his definition of what it means to be Pakeha, saw
whiteness as having little place in this definition. It is too vague a concept,
he argued, referring as it does to an “outer shell” and relying on an “often
empty” rhetoric (Pearson, 1989 p.64).
Similarly Spoonley (1995a, 1995b), dismissed the application of the word
white, suggesting that it is possible to address the principles of a Pakeha
identity without engaging with whiteness. The implied connection
between the two terms, he argued, is “overwhelmed” through claiming a
Pakeha identity and in the process marking oneself as part of the dominant
majority (Spoonley, 1995b, p. 98). It is this marking and admission of “the
group’s hegemony” that is important, he contended, rather than a focus on
race (Spoonley, 1995a, p. 58).
Race and Racism in New Zealand
New Zealand historian James Belich (1994) on the other hand, argued that
the naissance of white dominant culture, during the colonisation of this
17
country, coincided with a particular interest in race and racialisation and
that the perseverance of such ideas deserves some attention. His
discussion of race highlights the way in which the promotion of racial
purity and superiority has featured throughout New Zealand’s history in
both social policy and public rhetoric (Belich, 1994, 1996). This
consideration of race is significant in light of the preference that has
emerged in New Zealand since the early 1980s for the term ethnicity as an
expression of difference (Colvin, 2009). While in academic literature one
is often substituted for another without explanation (Colvin, 2009), there
are distinctions between the two terms that have particular relevance to
this discussion.
Ashcroft, et al. (2007) characterised race as a term applied to emphasise
fixed biological characteristics. The term is considered problematic
because of its use in justifying hierarchical divisions between groups on
the basis of supposedly immutable behaviours and traits. They argued
however that it is inextricably linked with colonisation and its need to
rationalise the domination of indigenous people. Frankenberg (1993)
proposed that contemporary reactions to these hierarchical divisions rely
upon historical conceptions of race, irrespective of whether the reactions
are for or against. The science that once supported these divisions has
been discredited but the negative consequences are very real and have had
a significant impact on the lives of many who are not white. It is the
endurance of these consequences for Maori that forms the backdrop to
this thesis.
Rather than a fixed characteristic, ethnicity is defined by Ashcroft, et al.
(2007, p.75) as shared “culture, tradition, language, social patterns and
ancestry”. They describe the term as expressing part of an individual’s
identity assumed by choice, usually as a means of positive self-expression
through an association with a particular faction. Explained in this way it is
18
possible to see why ethnicity has been seen to be a more appropriate
category within which to fit the self appellation of Pakeha. Its close
association with self identity rather than to the categorisation of other
groups however, highlights the differential relationship with power
inherent in the application of these terms (Mason, 1986). To simply
replace the term race with ethnicity therefore is to risk ignoring the effects
of this power – specifically the benefits that white New Zealanders have
gained through colonisation and the development of a nation founded on
theories of white supremacy (Colvin, 2009). Furthermore as Frankenberg
(1993, p. 189 emphasis in original) pointed out “because race has been
made into a difference, later discursive repertoires cannot simply abolish
it, but must engage it”.
Indeed, what has emerged during this review of the New Zealand
literature is that while race has largely been overlooked by white New
Zealand writers, it features prominently in the work of a number of Maori
authors. Historian Angela Ballara (1986) sought to present a Maori
perspective on mainstream historical events that have predominantly
been constructed by members of a dominant white majority and have
omitted analysis of the strong Maori resistance to colonisation. In
particular, she emphasised the beliefs that motivated the earlier settlers,
attitudes concerning their racial superiority and the inevitable demise of
Maori. These, she argued, have been a defining factor in New Zealand’s
development as a nation. Ballara (1986) proposed that the influence of
such ideas has extended through into contemporary times and can be
particularly exemplified by protests amongst factions of the white
majority against any form of Maori assertiveness or activism.
Donna Awatere’s (1984, p. 8) much cited collection of articles originally
published in Broadsheet Magazine and then collectively republished as the
book, Maori Sovereignty also “sought to re-conceptualize colonial
experience from a Maori point of view”. Awatere (1984) outlined the
19
inequalities that existed between Maori and white New Zealanders,
particularly focusing on the advantages that white people received from
living in a society dominated by white culture. She was particularly
scathing of institutions that she saw as promoting and supporting a white
way of life arguing that:
“The white New Zealand system was designed for whites. To get
through school, to have good health, to get jobs, to get a little
justice. If the system was designed for Maori people it would not be
the way it is now. And we would get through schools, we would not
have poor health, we would have jobs, we would not be getting
arrested and being sent to prison” (p.20).
While intentional individual racism may no longer be the dominant mode
of interaction between Maori and non Maori in New Zealand, the legacy of
notions of racial supremacy - institutional racism - continues to determine
the experiences of both Maori and non Maori today.
An emphasis on institutional racism was developed further in Puao te Ata
tu, a report examining the then Department of Social Welfare from a Maori
perspective, which argued that monoculturalism dominated the
Department and wider New Zealand society in a way that was alienating
for Maori (Ministerial Advisory Committee on a Maori Perspective for the
Department of Social Welfare, 1986). The authors saw New Zealand’s
social statistics as providing clear evidence that “the institutions by which
New Zealand society governs itself distributes its resources and produces
wealth do not serve Maori people but they do clearly serve the great bulk
of Pakeha people” (Ministerial Advisory Committee on a Maori Perspective
for the Department of Social Welfare, 1986, p. 78). These social statistics,
the authors contended, demonstrate an overrepresentation of Maori in
every negative New Zealand social statistic including; lower life
expectancy for Maori than non Maori, home ownership rates for Maori
20
that were 38% lower than non Maori and unemployment rates of 14% for
Maori compared to 3.7% for white New Zealanders. As will be discussed
in detail in Chapter Six, these social statistics have remained relatively
unchanged in the 25 years since this report was published indicating that
New Zealand’s institutions still cater to the needs of the dominant white
majority at the expense of Maori in this country.
White Privilege
White privilege in New Zealand. Despite the existence of a significant body of
work examining these negative statistics in relation to Maori, few New
Zealand writers have sought to explore the white privilege that these
statistics also demonstrate. Consedine and Consedine (2005) provided an
overview of historical and current social policy which they argued has
worked, and continues to work, overwhelmingly to disadvantage Maori in
favour of white New Zealanders. White privilege was defined by the
authors as the benefits that white New Zealanders have access to simply
through belonging to the dominant majority group. This privilege consists
of living in a country where to be white is to be ‘normal’. In the process of
colonisation, the language, culture, legal and education systems, decision-
making processes and delivery of medical services were all established to
cater to this norm. Many members of the white majority, they contended,
continue to ignore the overwhelming evidence of the damage done to
Maori by colonisation, and consequently are unable to see the ways in
which New Zealand institutions continue to perpetuate privilege through
legislation and policy designed to meet their needs.
Like Consedine and Consedine (2005), Colvin (2008, 2009) also presented
an argument of white privilege with firm roots in the colonisation of New
Zealand. In her analysis of newspaper articles from the early to late
nineteenth century she identified the discourses of “sovereignty, discipline
21
and paternalism”(Colvin, 2009, p. 11). Sovereignty emerged as the
ideology utilised in order to establish British authority in all of its
manifestations. Discipline appeared as a common discourse to justify
reactions to Maori protest and paternalism was utilised to imbue actions
and attitudes with an element of concern for Maori welfare. These
repertoires worked together to bolster white British rule, serving as one
avenue to establish and justify settler dominance while at the same time
undermining a strong Maori resistance.
Through analysis of these articles alongside the "Orewa Speech" made by
Don Brash in 2004, Colvin (2008) argued that discourses of and
concerning "natives" have developed into an established language for
mainstream media serving to sustain practices of colonisation in
contemporary times. It is not possible therefore, she argued, to separate a
past constructed on the basis of racial supremacy from contemporary
manifestations of racism. Alongside, and indeed supporting, these racist
practices, she noted the denial by many in the white majority of the
consequences of colonisation. In this way, white hegemony is
subsequently reinforced through “its taken-for grantedness its
naturalness, its unspokenness and its invisibility” (Colvin, 2009, p. 37).
Likewise Gibson’s (2006) concern was the power simultaneously
disguised and reinforced by whiteness as an invisible norm. Influenced by
Ruth Frankenberg’s (1993) United States-based research, to be discussed
later in this chapter, she argued that while her New Zealand research
participants often stated a lack of concern with racialisation and did not
consider themselves involved in racism, “they contributed much that was
relevant to both” (Frankenberg as cited in Gibson, 2006, p. 14). She noted
that, whiteness dominated the "discursive practices" of her participants
yet at the same time they struggled to articulate what it meant to be white
(Gibson, 2006, p. 248). Of particular relevance to this thesis, was her
contention that due to an implicit connection between whiteness and the
22
ideology of supremacy, her participants felt unable to “claim a ‘white’
identity ... in Aotearoa” (Gibson, 2006, p. 99).
Although not an extensive collection of literature, the work of these
authors suggests that white privilege determines the experiences of both
the white majority and Maori in New Zealand, although this largely
remains unseen by members of the former group. At the beginning of this
chapter I mentioned a number of streams of scholarship that have
informed this research. The connection between colonisation and
privilege and the invisibility of the latter to white people are both engaged
with in the New Zealand literature, although not to any great degree. In
order to substantiate and develop these further, I now turn to the
extensive body of international writing on whiteness and privilege in
order to highlight the trends within the literature that informed my own
research.
The origins of white privilege. A number of international writers,
predominately from the United States, have emphasised the historical
roots of white privilege, demonstrating how its existence in contemporary
society is the cumulative effect of government policy designed to satisfy
the demand for land by the early settlers. Political scientist Stanley
Greenberg (1980) located his argument within a discussion of capitalism
and colonialism. He suggested that white privilege or the
“disproportionate control over economic resources, a presumptive
privilege in social relations and a virtual monopoly on access to the state”
is firmly tied to the fundamentals of colonisation with its violent
appropriation of land and labour (Greenberg, 1980, p. 30). He argued that
the economic success of colonisation is dependent upon the continued
marginalisation of indigenous populations and is only made possible by
the political control of such populations. As a result, the development of
23
capitalism in colonised societies has often produced racial divisions –
divisions that do not disappear over time.
George Lipsitz (1998, 2008) too, illustrated how social policy, created by
white people for the benefit of other white people, has marginalized and
continues to marginalize non whites. Such policy he argued was often
deliberately designed to create advantages for white Americans out of the
disadvantages experienced by non whites. With its roots in slavery and
the dispossession of Native American Indians from their lands, the
racialisation of public policy in the United States has created, he argued, a
“possessive investment in whiteness.” The result is that white privilege is
firmly embedded in the institutions of that country, offering significant
assistance to white people in terms of health, education and social justice
and ultimately providing greater access to a range of economic and social
benefits. Institutional racism, it would seem, validates white privilege.
This argument has significant implications for any discussion of white
privilege in New Zealand where, as noted earlier in this chapter, social
statistics clearly indicate the institutional advantages experienced by the
dominant white majority. White people, Lipsitz (1998, 2008) contended,
are frequently ignorant about their own history and so do not make the
connection between past government policy and contemporary structural
inequality. Furthermore, objections by members of the white majority to
affirmative action programmes designed to challenge such inequity are
claimed to offer unfair advantages to minority groups. As his argument
demonstrates however, white people have been able to enjoy a life time of
affirmative action which has allowed members of the white majority to
accumulate a significant proportion of the wealth in the United States.
Social theorist Joe Feagin’s (1999) contention is similar but he narrowed
his focus to housing discrimination against non whites in the United States.
In the process he presented the argument that, beginning from the days of
24
slavery, white wealth has largely been secured through a range of
government policies which have given white people greater access to
property. Like Lipsitz (1998), Feagin (1999) stressed the importance of
intergenerational wealth transfer arguing that such policy has enabled
white people to amass assets which have accumulated from generation to
generation. As a result, many white people today own and live in areas
which not only offer high financial returns in terms of property equity, but
are also located near desirable schools, a situation, he argues, that ensures
the continuation of privilege.
For Cheryl Harris (1993), whiteness is not just about the increased access
to property but has become a form of property itself. In an argument that
sees parallels with the colonisation of New Zealand, she argued that
property rights in the United States were defined around European
customs which emphasised the cultivation of the land. Land utilised by
indigenous people but left undeveloped was labelled as “waste” land and
confiscated on this basis. In this way the alienation of indigenous peoples
from their lands was justified through law. Whiteness became so closely
associated with property rights that it became an asset in itself able to be
“use[d] and enjoy[ed]” in much the same way as property (C. Harris, 1993,
p. 1731). For Harris (1993, p. 1734); “[w]hiteness can move from being a
passive characteristic as an aspect of identity to an active entity that – like
other forms of property - is used to fulfil the will and to exercise power”.
The work of these authors emphasises the historical genesis of white
privilege and the symbiotic relationship it has with economic and political
power; a relationship which both created and serves to sustain privilege in
many Western countries. It adds support to the arguments of New
Zealand writers, presented earlier in the chapter, that the policies of the
settler and succeeding governments which led to the alienation of Maori
from their lands and subsequent loss of control over resources, has largely
contributed to the current inequalities between Maori and non Maori
25
(Ballara, 1986; Consedine & Consedine, 2005; Ministerial Advisory
Committee on a Maori Perspective for the Department of Social Welfare,
1986). While the conditions surrounding the colonisation of this country
were unique, what the international literature demonstrates is that the
underlying ideology of white supremacy, used to establish and justify
white colonial rule, was not. Furthermore by highlighting the
institutionalisation of this ideology in the form of social policy, these
writers are able explain the endurance of its legacy - contemporary white
privilege.
The Invisibility of Whiteness and Privilege
In one of the most influential pieces of scholarship on the subject, Peggy
McIntosh (1988) argued that many white people refuse to acknowledge
this privilege. Her paper, “White Privilege and Male Privilege”, grew from
the identification of a white privilege not dissimilar to the male privilege
she was working to expose through her faculty work in Women's Studies.
She examined how her own white privilege operated and defined her
everyday life, discovering in the process 46 assets that she believed she
had accrued based solely on the colour of her skin. Her conclusion that
“[my] skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to
make”, helped redefine racism as privilege for white people (McIntosh,
1988, p. 11). Consequently, racism was reconstructed as a white problem
with an emphasis on both the ways in which Western institutions
perpetuate this privilege and the complicity of white people in this.
McIntosh (1988, p. 1) characterized her privilege as “an invisible package
of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day but about
which I was “meant” to remain oblivious". This invisibility, she argued,
allows white people to define their way of life as the norm and a standard
against which others will be measured. By seeing whiteness reflected in
26
the world around, the dominant white majority have come to ignore the
voices, experiences and cultures of others. Furthermore, within Western
society this is permitted without any negative impact on white people as
individuals or as a group. All of these aspects McIntosh (1988) writes,
increase the feelings of comfort for white people within society while at
the same time, serving to alienate those who do not fit the definition of the
white norm.
Following the publication of McIntosh’s (1988) paper, academic interest in
white privilege grew and an extensive body of international literature
exploring the topic in different ways and across a range of disciplines has
been published. Her argument that whiteness is invisible to white people
found support throughout the literature (Clarke & Garner, 2010; Dei, et al.,
2004; Dyer, 1997, 2008; Frankenberg, 1993; Gibson, 2006; hooks, 1997;
McIntosh, 1988; Morrison, 1992; Rothenberg, 2008; Sue, 2004a, 2004b).
Dyer (1997, p. 2) extended McIntosh’s (1988) argument that to be white is
to be the norm, highlighting the tendency for white people to distinguish
non whites by race or ethnicity, while at the same time, omitting to
identify other whites in the same way. Instead, they are “just people”
(Dyer, 1992, p.2). Being without race but claiming to represent the human
race is one of the “paradoxes” of whiteness that for Dyer (1997) gives it
strength. He argued that in assuming neutrality and ordinariness,
whiteness has come to be regarded as invisible. The position of power
that this invisibility bestows will be maintained, he contended, “until we
see whiteness, see its power, its particularity and limitedness, put it in its
place and end its rule” (Dyer, 1997, p. 4). Likewise, Dei, Karumanchery
and Karumanchery-Lui (2004) argued that Western societies are
structured through race but for white people it is only the race of others
that is noticed. In this way the power of whiteness inherent within this
structure remains unchallenged.
27
Ruth Frankenberg’s (1993) research aimed to make whiteness visible
through an exploration of race and racism in the lives of thirty white
women. While the majority of her participants did not see themselves as
being concerned with either, she concluded that both were intricately
woven throughout their everyday lives. The invisibility to her subjects of
their whiteness, and of the part it had to play in their daily lives, often
meant concepts of race and culture were perceived as having relevance
only for ethnic minorities. In the same way as McIntosh (1988), had done
earlier, she repositioned racism as a concern for white people. White
culture she contended, needs to be positioned as both “constructed and
dominant rather than as norm” and its influence in the lives of white
people acknowledged (Frankenberg, 1993, p. 243).
Following a series of interviews with white people on the topic of their
skin colour, Sue (2004b) demonstrated that whiteness is often invisible to
those whom it describes. Yet as an Asian American, he writes “I do not
find [w]hiteness to be invisible because I do not fit many of the normative
qualities that make [w]hiteness invisible” (Sue, 2004b, p. 764). Indeed
while McIntosh’s (1988) proposition that white skin colour accrues a set of
privileges was groundbreaking in white academic circles, many non white
writers on the subject argued that this knowledge was not new (Ahmed,
2007; hooks, 1989, 1997; Morrison, 1992; Roediger, 1998; Sue, 2004a,
2004b). Whiteness, while often remaining invisible to white people has
always been visible to those who are not.
In explicating the ways in which whiteness has been perceived by black
people hooks (1989, 1997) exploded the myth of white as an invisible
norm and firmly positioned whiteness as a privileged other. In
contemporary America, hooks (1997) contends, many white people are
stunned to discover that not only are they seen, but in the process of being
observed they are stereotyped and objectified in the same way that ethnic
minorities are often classified by white people. This assumed invisibility,
28
she argued, has its roots in the days of American slavery when the "black
gaze" was controlled and black slaves forbidden to look at their white
owners. For hooks (1997), whiteness far from being invisible is often
synonymous with terror and it is out of this that the “power of whiteness”
has been constructed (hooks, 1997, p. 175). Living in a society which
promotes white supremacy forces her to constantly confront this power; a
power that is reinforced by its invisibility to those who benefit from it.
That a number of non white writers, both in New Zealand and
internationally, have chosen to focus on whiteness and race had a
significant influence on the direction of this thesis. While some Maori
writers during the 1980s were compelled to argue that whiteness and its
influence had shaped past and present New Zealand society and its
institutions (Awatere, 1984; Ballara, 1986; Ministerial Advisory
Committee on a Maori Perspective for the Department of Social Welfare,
1986), white writers responded by claiming whiteness to be irrelevant
(King, 1985, 1991; Pearson, 1989; Spoonley, 1995a, 1995b). In the
significant body of international whiteness literature I found support for
the former position and the importance of attending to race in
contemporary New Zealand. Frankenberg (1993, p. 6) offered a very
strong argument for making whiteness visible; that we as white people are
able to argue “I am not racist” but that it is more difficult for us to say “I am
not white”. This reframing of racism as inextricably linked with whiteness
emphasises white hegemony and consequently makes it more difficult for
white people to ignore.
Development of the Research Question
My overarching concern in undertaking this thesis was to discuss white
privilege within a New Zealand context. In the face of New Zealand
scholarship that proffered an analysis of ethnicity at the expense of race,
29
the small amount of New Zealand literature on whiteness and its benefits,
alongside the larger amount of international literature on the subject, both
validated my interest in the topic and highlighted the gap existing for local
research aiming to make this visible.
In looking for a New Zealand context within which to locate this discussion
of whiteness and privilege, I was intrigued by Lawn’s (1994) suggestion
that the label Pakeha as a self identity is employed to evade the negative
associations that whiteness has increasingly begun to acquire in Western
society. Targeting literature which defined a Pakeha identity as
expressing a sense of belonging in New Zealand and a relationship with
Maori (see for example: Dann, 1991; King, 1985, 1991; Olssen, 1991;
Spoonley, 1991), Lawn (1994) admonished writers for failing to challenge
institutionalised white hegemony. While a number of academics
subsequently engaged with the idea of dominant majority power,
emphasising the politics of claiming a Pakeha identity, a consideration of
whiteness and white privilege largely remained absent (see for example:
Pearson, 1989; Pearson & Sissons, 1997; Spoonley, 1995b; Spoonley &
Larner, 1995).
Through reviewing the New Zealand literature on a Pakeha identity, I
became persuaded that a more critical evaluation of the term was
warrante; one that took into consideration the effects of institutionalised
racism and the realities and consequences of white majority privileges. An
analysis of the meaning behind claiming Pakeha as an identity, specifically
in relation to whiteness, would allow me to contextualise the themes that I
had been drawn to in the international literature.
These themes – white privilege and the invisibility of whiteness - form two
parts of the research question. In trying to understand why some New
Zealanders choose to call themselves Pakeha, I aim to draw attention to
the awareness they have of their own whiteness. Influenced by writing
30
that emphasises the invisibility of whiteness, I am interested in
understanding the place that whiteness occupies in the hierarchy of
meaning attached to this self identity. If, as Lawn (1994) suggested, it is
obscured by the term Pakeha itself, I wish to question if the privilege that
whiteness provides in New Zealand also remains unseen.
The research question I have developed is: What is the relationship
between the usage of the word “Pakeha” by some white New Zealanders
and their understanding of their own whiteness and white privilege?
31
Chapter 3
Methodology
This chapter provides an outline of methodological strategies utilised in
order to both gather and analyse data in this piece of qualitative research.
I address not only the practical issues dealt with, but also the theoretical
concerns I needed to attend to throughout the research. In the tradition of
a qualitative research strategy, the ontological position assumed here is
one of constructionism (Bryman, 2004). From this position, I look at social
reality as being both constructed and constructive through discourse
(Bryman, 2004; Wetherell & Potter, 1992).
As illustrated in the previous chapter I have drawn upon critical whiteness
theory in order to examine whiteness and privilege as it is understood by a
group of Pakeha New Zealanders. Whiteness theory developed as
whiteness studies emerged as a field of study during the 1990s largely in
the United States and to a lesser extent Britain and Australia. There is an
extensive body of literature that falls under the umbrella label of
whiteness studies. It extends across a range of disciplines as diverse as
history (Lipsitz, 1998; Roediger, 1998), sociology (Frankenberg, 1993),
law (C. Harris, 1993), literature (Morrison, 1992), and feminist studies
(McIntosh, 1988).
Whilst different in their focus and methodological concerns, all whiteness
theorists share a view of whiteness as socially constructed. Whiteness has
meaning only through the collective agreement of various social groups
that there is power and privilege attached to being white. Whiteness
32
theory challenges the normalization of whiteness. Seeking to highlight and
dispel the belief that white values and culture are the universal norm in
many Western societies, it instead draws attention to the way in which
whiteness as the norm has evolved into a privilege.
Thematic analysis provided the organising concept for this thesis.
Consistent with the perspective that qualitative research is inductive
(Liamputtong & Ezzy, 2005), categories in thematic analysis are identified
during the research process and relationships between them explored as
the research progresses. At the centre of this is coding. This practice
involves making comparisons between different aspects of the data and
reorganising it in order to highlight social practices (Liamputtong & Ezzy,
2005). Applying this process of decontextualising and recontextualising to
my own research data allowed themes to emerge which served as a
framework for further data analysis.
Having established themes within the data, I then looked to discourse
theory and the notion of language as social action (Wetherell, 2001;
Wetherell & Potter, 1992). Discourse theory is concerned with the way in
which language is used. It argues that rather than being neutral, language
is actively employed in order to achieve a particular end. Formed within
the postmodernist tradition, discourse theory proposes that in studying
language in use, researchers can begin to understand the social realities of
their participants. Throughout this thesis I was interested in the version
of reality constructed by a group of Pakeha New Zealanders as they
discussed identity, whiteness and privilege. My research takes the
theoretical position that, “realism …[is] something that is achieved through
the way text or talk is put together” (Wetherell & Potter, 1992, p. 95
emphasis in original).
Sampling Method
33
Sampling for this study was purposive in that I strategically selected
participants who were relevant to the research project (Bryman, 2004).
The condition for participation was the use of Pakeha as a self identity. I
recruited participants who met this criterion in several ways. I initially
made contact with one of the organisers of Network Waitangi Otautahi, a
voluntary group which aims to promote an understanding of the Treaty of
Waitangi amongst non Maori in New Zealand. She emailed information
regarding my research out to the Network’s database. The email stated
that I was researching white privilege for my Master’s thesis and was
looking to interview people who identified as Pakeha. I received a number
of replies to this and followed up providing a more detailed information
sheet about the project (Appendix B). Those who agreed to participate
were asked if they knew of anyone else who might be interested in
participating. I also approached former classmates and asked if they or
anyone they knew would be willing to be involved. The snowballing
technique was used, whereby I made contact with a small number of
people who met my research criteria and then used them to make further
connections.
The participants. All but two of the participants lived in Christchurch at
the time of the interviews. Nine participants were women and six were
men. They ranged in age from their mid twenties to their late fifties, with
the majority being over forty. While most were born in New Zealand, two
had immigrated as adults. All were tertiary educated. All participants
were advised that the information they provided would remain
confidential and their privacy maintained. In order to ensure this, I
assigned each a pseudonym. While I did not specifically ask the
participants to provide demographic data, this emerged over the course of
the interviews. The participants signed consent forms (Appendix A) which
advised them they could withdraw from the project at any time prior to
34
analysis of the data. They were also offered the opportunity to review the
transcripts and make changes where they felt the transcript did not
accurately reflect their opinions.
Data Gathering
I gathered data using 15 in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Following a
review of the literature I identified three themes that I wished to explore
during the interviews;
identifying as Pakeha
whiteness
white privilege
These themes provided the framework for the interviews but the flexible
nature of semi-structured interviewing allowed me to depart from the
Interview Question Guide (Appendix C) and focus on different aspects of
each participant’s experience as appropriate (Bryman, 2004; Liamputtong
& Ezzy, 2005). While some questions were repeated in all of the
interviews, in general I allowed the participants to focus on what they felt
was important in relation to these three sections. In doing so, I aimed to
understand how the participants interpreted the topics being discussed.
I interviewed 14 participants face-to-face and one by email. My initial
intention was to conduct all interviews face-to-face however, I was forced
to revise this following the second Canterbury Earthquake on February
22nd 2011 which caused major disruption and upheaval in the lives of
many people living in Christchurch at the time. An interview scheduled for
this day had to be cancelled and while the participant initially indicated an
intention to remain with the project, due to circumstances arising from the
earthquake she later decided not to be involved. As a result of similar
changes in living and working situations during the post earthquake
35
recovery, others who had earlier expressed an interest in participating
also decided against it. Finally in June, four months after the earthquake
and facing increasing time constraints, I decided to engage with a
participant from outside of Christchurch who had previously indicated
interest in the project.
Face-to-face interviews. The face-to-face interviews lasted from 45
minutes to two hours with most taking around one and a half hours. All
interviews were recorded and later transcribed in full by me. The
interviews took place in a variety of locations; in my office, at the
participant’s workplace or at a cafe, depending on where was most
convenient for the person being interviewed. I chose to use this form of
data collection for a number of reasons. In-depth one-on-one interviews
are an effective means of gaining an understanding of the meaning
individuals attach to certain experiences (Liamputtong & Ezzy, 2005).
Meeting participants face-to-face gave me an opportunity to build rapport
and, as will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter, to actively
participate in the interview. There was a spontaneity to the responses
which stood in marked contrast to the more considered responses gleaned
in the email interview. While probing for more information was possible
in the email interview, the synchronous nature of the face-to-face
interviews made this far simpler and, I felt, more effective. I was also able
to interpret non-verbal signals to gauge when participants were
uninterested in or, alternatively, moved by particular issues and explore
both of these further (Bryman, 2004), an aspect which proved vital to my
analysis.
Email interview. The email interview was conducted using the same
interview schedule as the face-to-face interviews and took place over the
36
course of four emails. For a number of reasons I sent the questions in
three parts as naturally dictated by the schedule. In particular, I did not
want to overwhelm the participant with information. I also felt that I
would be more likely to receive detailed and considered replies to each of
the questions if the participant was only faced with a small number at one
time (Bryman, 2004). Furthermore, the back and forth nature of the
exchange gave me the opportunity to ask for more information where
necessary and to tailor questions based on earlier responses. Following
the interview, once the data had been converted into a word file, the
original emails were deleted in order to protect the participant’s privacy.
There were a number of advantages to using an email interview as a data
gathering tool. Most obviously it allowed me to interview someone who
lived outside of Christchurch without the expense of travel. Furthermore
it removed the time consuming and at times laborious task of transcribing
the data. It did, however, also present a number of challenges. During the
face-to-face interviews the emotions behind the answers were often very
visible. Similarly when I felt that a question of mine had been
misunderstood, I was able to immediately clarify. In these ways then there
was a loss of immediacy within the email interview that I felt translated
into a less active role for me as an interviewer and detracted from the
richness of the data collected.
Active Interviewing
My active participation in the majority of the interviews was a deliberate
strategy and the result of both practical and theoretical considerations.
Practically it was important to ensure I gathered sufficient data on the
topic to analyse. As outlined in the previous chapter, a significant number
of writers have emphasised the invisibility of whiteness to white people.
In her research with white New Zealanders, Gibson (2006, p. 71)
37
highlighted the silences that emerged as her participants struggled to
articulate what being white meant to them, revealing that at one point in
her analysis she realised she “had 60 hours of women’s speech
interspersed with prolonged silences but little explicit [w]hiteness ‘talk’”.
For this reason I felt that in order to allow participants to engage fully with
the subject, my active participation could prove crucial in the construction
of meaning during the course of the interview (Liamputtong & Ezzy,
2005).
Theoretically active interviewing is also consistent with discourse theory.
From this stance it is proposed that “discourse work interviews ... [should
be] treated as a piece of social interaction in their own right. The
interviewer is contributing just as much as the interviewee” (Wetherell &
Potter, 1992, p. 99). In contrast to the established view of an impartial
interviewer, in discourse research he or she is perceived as being
manifestly and inextricably involved in the creation of meaning (Gubrium
& Holstein, 2003). Having redefined the interview as collaborative,
discourse theorists then encourage the interviewer to challenge the
assumptions of participants in order to draw out as much data as possible.
Consequently, in terms of the analysis itself, discussed later in this chapter,
the interaction between me the interviewer and those I interviewed was
as relevant as the words of the participants themselves.
Insider/Outsider Research
Making the decision to actively participate in the interviews seemed also
to fit with my assumption of an insider researcher role. In addition to
researcher, I am a member of the research group – a New Zealander who
identifies as Pakeha. It was my intention at the outset of interviewing to
use my group membership to emphasise a common ground with those I
38
interviewed in order to build rapport, facilitating the joint production of
meaning.
In the early interviews this worked well. The first few interviews were
with women of a similar age and socioeconomic background to me. Our
educational backgrounds were comparable as were our politics and points
of view. The conversation flowed easily and I was able to direct the talk
along the interview schedule, clarifying misunderstandings and in the
process producing a dialogue containing rich interview data. As the
interviews progressed however I met with participants with whom I had
less in common. Age, gender and educational differences all served, at
various stages, to hinder the easy rapport I had developed in my early
interviews and I began to realise that my self-ascribed ethnicity did not
transcend all other social distinctions or the misinterpretations and
tensions that arose from these (see for example: Gallagher, 2004).
Furthermore, my focus on insider status began to create another problem
as I found myself becoming overwhelmed by the opinions and advice of
the interviewees. As Bonnett (2000b) carped, one of the difficulties he had
to contend with in writing about whiteness was the assumption from
many white people he encountered that they already knew everything
there was to know on the subject. While the participants I interviewed
readily acknowledged that white privilege was a subject that needed to be
talked about, some questioned my focus on whiteness either directly or
obliquely by attempting to discursively sidestep the topic. In a number of
interviews, participants seemed uninterested when I continued to focus
my questions in this direction displaying a marked preference for talk
about white privilege later in the interviews. It was not that whiteness
was unimportant rather it seemed that it was unimportant to them. While
aware that it is not uncommon for qualitative researchers to struggle to
unravel their own opinions from those of their participants (Bryman,
39
2004), I found myself becoming distracted during the interviews by the
implication that I was approaching the topic from an irrelevant angle.
Having completed half of the interviews I made the decision to take a
break in order to re-establish my focus.
Referencing Gayatri Spivak, hooks (2009) argued that white people may
need to reposition themselves in relation to common discourses of
hegemony. Instead of continuing to look at whiteness from a white
perspective therefore, I re-engaged with the literature which described
whiteness as it appears to those who are not. Awatere’s (1984) critique of
white New Zealand culture; Toni Morrison’s (1992) analysis of the
absence of an “Africanist” presence in traditional classical American
literature; hooks’ (1997) descriptions of whiteness as terror; the vivid
images of white violence constructed in the anthology Black on White
(Roediger, 1998), all composed whiteness in a way that had not
manifested itself in any of the interview data I had collected to date.
Specifically it positioned whiteness as impossible to ignore.
This writing enabled me to see that I needed to reposition myself in
relation to the participants in order to move the research project forward.
In looking at the data I had collected, I began to notice the ways in which
my insider role had at times overshadowed my role as a researcher.
Rather than focusing on my position as an insider, I began to realise that I
needed to move more fluidly between the roles of insider and outsider,
researched and researcher. My insider status did not disappear in later
interviews but by necessity, at times, took a secondary role to my outsider
role as the researcher. As Griffith (1998, p. 374) has argued “[the]
researcher is always located somewhere. Her knowledge is situated in
particular sets of social relations. But that is the beginning of the research
story and not the end”. While still an insider and still actively engaged in
the interviews, I was more willing to step outside this location as I sought
to understand the relevance of whiteness to the participants. While
40
understanding that (and indeed why) many of the participants may have
seen my repetitive questioning about their whiteness as unnecessary, as
researcher I realised I needed to continue to interrogate this.
Furthermore, I began to see that a reluctance to discuss whiteness could
be interpreted as a rhetorical device that complemented other themes that
were beginning to emerge from the data.
Reflexivity
Integral to my understanding of the need to reposition myself was the
incorporation of reflexivity into the project. Young (2000, p. 642) defined
reflexivity as a practice which “involves self-reflection of one’s research
process and findings, self-awareness of one’s social positionality, values,
and perspectives, and self-critique of the effects of one’s words and actions
upon the individuals and groups being studied”. Wetherell and Potter
(1992, p. 103) likewise maintained that for the researcher, an examination
of one’s values and beliefs is an important part of discourse research.
From this position then it is not simply the interpretations of the
participants that are implicated in this piece of research, but also my own
reactions as I made sense of the data and converted it into research
findings.
The admission by the researcher of their own influence on a piece of
research has come to be increasingly recognised as an important part of
the qualitative research process (Bryman, 2004; Liamputtong, 2009;
Wetherell & Potter, 1992). In the context of white writers writing about
privilege, however, there has also been criticism of it for being
unnecessarily self indulgent (M. Anderson, 2003; Bonnett, 2000b). Paying
attention to the warning that autobiographical accounts of whiteness can
often provide little insight into the operation of structural white privilege,
I have focused my use of reflexivity on the critiquing of my research
41
methods. Throughout the project, I kept a journal documenting many
aspects of the research process and my reactions to these. In evaluating
and engaging with these as I wrote this thesis, my aim was, as Spivak
(1990, p. 11) recommends, to be “vigilant about [my] practices” and
ultimately improve the quality of my research.
Data Analysis
Thematic analysis. As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the data was
analysed using both thematic and discourse analysis. The first step I took
in the process of analysis was to thematically sort the data. I began
reading through the transcripts and assigning codes as I read. The codes
themselves were initially quite basic. At times I used my own
interpretation, but I also noted down words that participants had used
that I felt to be significant. For example the word “relationship” appeared
frequently within the transcripts as participants described what being
Pakeha meant to them and I adopted this word during the coding process.
After refining the codes, I then examined them for connections and
grouped them thematically. Moving from codes to themes and back again
to the reworking of codes was a particularly important step for me in
organising the data and eventually four themes emerged from this
process:
Relationship with Maori
Reification of whiteness
Disengagement from privilege
Separation from other white people
Each of these themes and the relationships between them is discussed in
Chapters Four, Five, Six and Seven respectively.
42
Discourse analysis. Crucial to my examination of these themes was the
process of discourse analysis. As highlighted earlier in this chapter,
language in discourse analysis rather than being seen as neutral is
perceived as a means to an end. It is not seen as conveying information
about events or interactions or things but as constructing these through
discourse. In reference to Michel Foucault’s work, cultural theorist Stuart
Hall (2001) described discourse (the interviews), rather than the speaking
subject (the interviewees), as the producer of meaning. Discourse analysis
then becomes an attempt to “overcome the traditional distinction between
what one says (language) and what one does (practice)” (Hall, 2001, p. 72
emphasis in original).
This does not mean that discourse analysts are proposing that through
analysis we can discover some universal truth obscured by the language of
the research participants. Rather, the interest lies in the ways in which
language is used and the consequences of this (Wetherell, 2001). The
interview transcripts were therefore subjected to a “sceptical reading”
where I looked at patterns within and beyond the language (Gill as cited in
Bryman, 2004, p. 371). Having identified four major themes in the data, I
was interested in understanding the ways in which these were reinforced
through the discursive practices of the participants.
I began considering the functionality of the spoken discourse, questioning
how the participants used language to portray themselves. I examined the
organisation of language and considered how this was structured in order
to persuade me, the listener, as to the validity of their arguments.
Wetherell and Potter (1992) propose that the manner in which research
participants tell their stories should become the subject of the analysis.
Informed by their study of racist language in New Zealand I was interested
in examining not only the words employed by the participants, but also the
rhetorical means used to construct arguments and increase the
persuasiveness of their discourse.
43
Discourse analysis furthermore formed a critical part of my reflexive
approach to the data. I subjected my own words in the transcripts to the
same sceptical reading as those of the participants in order to emphasise
my contribution to the shared meaning produced within the interviews
(Wetherell, 2001). My intention was to examine the mutual
understandings that existed in the interviews and the ways in which these
contributed to, and even extended, the construction of meaning. An
analysis of my questioning, for example, revealed discursive practices
which may have helped create the appropriate context for participants to
utilise the discourse of separation that featured so prominently within the
interview data and is discussed in detail in Chapter Seven.
Conclusion
This thesis was informed by a number of theoretical perspectives. The
presence of critical whiteness theory extends throughout as I situate this
study within the extensive body of international and national literature on
whiteness and privilege. Seeing whiteness as a social construct has
provided the framework for a number of writers on whiteness and white
privilege (see for example: Applebaum, 2003; Dyer, 1997; Frankenberg,
1993; Gibson, 2006). In examining the construction of a Pakeha identity,
whiteness and privilege as they emerged in and through the discourse of
the participants, I drew on this tradition. Representing both whiteness
and a Pakeha identity as social constructs was a concern of mine
throughout this thesis.
In utilising discourse theory I was interested in looking for the meaning
behind the language of a group of white New Zealanders as we discussed
identity, whiteness and privilege. I was concerned from a thematic
perspective in understanding what this language described but also in
looking beyond this in an attempt to understand the purpose that it
served. Wetherell (2001) contends that discourse involves action, in other
44
words language is always doing something. My intention was to
understand the social action inherent in the language of the interview
transcripts. Above all my methodological practices were focused on
examining what the discourse of a Pakeha identity was doing in relation to
the understandings research participants had of whiteness and privilege.
45
Chapter 4
A Pakeha Relationship with Maori
As outlined in Chapter One, for some members of the dominant white
majority in New Zealand, the word Pakeha has very negative connotations.
It has erroneously been interpreted as white pig, white flea or white dog,
amongst other derogatory terms, and for this reason many refuse to be
identified as such. Yet a significant number of white New Zealanders have
chosen to adopt the term as a self identifier. Through discussions with
members of this group, I sought to understand the meaning that they
applied to this term. In this chapter I examine the main theme to emerge
during analysis of the interview data in which we discussed being Pakeha;
that a Pakeha identity represents a connection to both New Zealand and to
Maori people. Although my initial assessment indicated that these were
two very separate themes, as I spent more time with the data I began to
see the extent to which they merged to form one discourse – that of a
relationship with Maori – which dominated the participants’ talk.
In the second half of the chapter, I consider the predominance of this
discourse within the context of whiteness literature positing that many
white people in Western cultures similarly consider their ethnicity only
within the context of a relationship to non white (Dyer, 1997;
Frankenberg, 1993; McIntosh, 1988; McKinney & Feagin, 2003; Roediger,
1998). I propose that the overwhelming predominance of a relational
definition demonstrates what has been referred to as the “empty alterity”
46
or lack of substance in the Pakeha identity (MacLean, 1996, p. 110).
Maclean (1996, p. 117) has proposed that “there is no need for Pakeha to
ever articulate the terms of their ethnicity – they, or is that we, hold that
power anyway”. A discussion of this power in relation to the social reality
of white dominance in New Zealand makes up the final part of the chapter.
Connection with Maori
Rejection of Europe. For many of the participants I interviewed, a Pakeha
identity represents an expression of national belonging. A desire to both
locate themselves geographically and articulate their commitment to New
Zealand was apparent in the interviews as we began to discuss why they
had made the decision to self identify as Pakeha.
Elinor: I say I’m Pakeha so immediately you know that I’m not Maori but I define as being from here.
Neil: It [Pakeha] is a name that identifies me to some extent as being of this place.
Selena: For me it [Pakeha] has … a unique New Zealand identity.
For over half of those I interviewed, acknowledging their connection to
New Zealand was a significant motivation behind assuming a Pakeha
identity. This was further reinforced by the rejection of the alternative
label - New Zealand European - by all but two of those interviewed.
Dan: It’s probably more that no other term [except Pakeha] … works … for me. Yeah not like New Zealand European … because I … don’t feel like a European.
Ann: Why do I identify as Pakeha? Because it sets me aside from … being identified as European which ... after visiting Europe I think well THEY’RE Europeans and they are so culturally different.
47
Kurt: If I acknowledge that this is now my place then European actually no longer has any meaning to me, I’m not European.
Marcie: I think the European thing never really made sense to me anyway. … My European … affiliation isn’t particularly strong. I don’t know much about my European history.
These statements correspond with previous interview work with white
New Zealanders which has also found that in self identifying as Pakeha,
people are emphasising a connection to New Zealand and a rejection of
Europe (Gibson, 2006; Hepi, 2008; Pearson & Sissons, 1997). The case
presented against New Zealand European is in essence, that it does not
securely locate a person within this country in the way that Pakeha does.
Through re-reading the transcripts, I became particularly interested in this
argument, not only because it appeared with such frequency throughout
the interview data, but also because of the similarities with which it was
presented. Participants repeatedly stated that they were not European
while often proceeding to reveal European ancestry. They argued that
New Zealand European did not locate them in this country, despite the
term clearly only being appropriate for use by someone who is a New
Zealand national with European heritage.
Billig (2001) proposed that we do not create our own language but use the
language, and the arguments within that language, we have available to us.
The claim to not be European has been created within a particular
historical, cultural and ideological context. During the Maori cultural
renaissance and protest movement which marked the 1970s and 1980s
many white New Zealanders also began to question their own cultural
identity. Challenges from Maori activists motivated a number of white
New Zealanders to construct an identity that distinctively located them in
this country. Donna Awatere (1984) called for white New Zealanders to
distance themselves from Britain, and values and beliefs that were not
theirs. She argued that the reassertion of a Maori identity had revealed the
lack of a distinctive white New Zealand identity. Michael King (1985,
48
1991) was amongst the first to respond to the challenge and publically
declare that he was not European as he sought to define his national and
ethnic identity. Since that time this argument has recurred with such
frequency that it has became a standard ideology within the discourse
utilised by many white New Zealanders to assert their independence from
colonial Britain.
Ideology has been described as a thought process that has become so
natural that it is assumed to be beyond question (Billig, 2001). In relation
to identity therefore, it has become common-sense for many white New
Zealanders to argue that they are not European and being common-sense,
the statement is seldom interrogated. Yet Billig (2001, p. 218) has also
proposed that “it is the nature of common-sense that it contains contrary
themes”. The inherent contradiction in the claim not to be European was
often acknowledged by those I interviewed but did not appear to them to
be problematic. While readily acknowledging that their ancestors came
from Europe, the argument was frequently repeated that the terms
European or New Zealand European were inadequate descriptors.
Joy: I think that New Zealand European is … really [a] misnomer … my heritage is Scottish, Irish, English, a smattering of Dutch and a little bit of Scandinavian. Yes they are all European nations … we all have that as heritage as … culture but … very few of us identify with the places that we came from or visit them or have … relatives still living there.
Kurt: If I labelled myself New Zealand European what I’m saying is that … I’m giving cognizance to my … history in Europe but not acknowledging that this is now my place and if I acknowledge that this is now my place then European actually no longer has any meaning to me, I’m not European.
Chris: Defining myself as European is misleading, as whilst my whakapapa is European I don't have an overarching contextual reference as European.
49
These claims are interesting because it seems plausible to argue that New
Zealand European quite clearly identifies a person as having European
ancestry but not being European. If one were to replace the word ‘Pakeha’
with the phrase ‘New Zealand European’, in the excerpts from Elinor, Neil
and Selena cited at the beginning of this chapter, it does not seem to
detract from this emphasis and still equally represents the bearer as being
from here. Instead I propose that the participants are drawing on the
common-sense ideology of a rejection of the phrase New Zealand
European in order to override the inherent contradiction in the argument.
Creating a relationship with Maori. By setting themselves apart from
Europeans, Pakeha are implicitly associating with Maori. Separation from
other white people emerged as a major theme in the data and will be
discussed in more detail in Chapter Seven. Here one aspect of this - the
rejection of a European identity - can be seen to support the most
dominant theme in the data to emerge in relation to a Pakeha identity, that
in identifying as Pakeha, participants were seeking to assert a positive
relationship with Maori.
The narrative which rejects an association with Europe offers a
geographical connection to New Zealand. The acceptance in its place of a
word from the Maori language similarly implies a connection with the
indigenous people of New Zealand. Elements of Maori language and
culture that have found their way into mainstream New Zealand culture
have become an accessible means for white New Zealanders to set
themselves apart from white people in Britain and other countries around
the world. Hepi (2008) has argued that a preference for the word Pakeha
depends upon its status as part of the Maori language and consequently,
its power to emphasise the bearer’s claim of belonging in this country.
This position was explicitly supported within the research data.
50
Selena: When I think of New Zealand … I think … of things … that mean New Zealand and one of those things is … Maori and Te Reo … I come from here so then it makes sense to me to identify as Pakeha and that’s a Maori word and that’s appropriate.
Rae: Part of me likes that [Pakeha is a Maori word] … because … it has a cultural flavour or identity.
Elinor: I think the mere fact that Pakeha is a Maori word acknowledges the Maori Pakeha relationship.
This relationship was expressed explicitly by all but three of those
interviewed. The assertion that being Pakeha conveys a connection with
Maori appeared frequently in the transcripts and was articulated in a
number of ways. For Eve it was “respect to the indigenous people” and for
Joy it was expressed as an “affinity with Maori culture”. The word
relationship itself occurred frequently in the data.
Ann: It [Pakeha] gives me a term that … [expresses] a relationship with the other treaty party.
Rae: I think it’s [Pakeha] probably more like a home grown label or identity because … it’s Maori and it … indicates a relationship with tangata whenua.
Debra: To me it is acknowledging that special relationship that Treaty relationship and everything that goes with that.
By implication this relationship is a positive one and this was highlighted
by the use of language which implied the term had been gifted by Maori.
Kurt: That’s why Pakeha is such a lovely term because it’s a term that … completely breaks down that we/ they thing because the name actually has been attributed by another group. It’s not self attributed, it’s attributed by another group.
Ann: It’s a term that was given to us not one that we’ve created.
51
Debra: They’ve [Maori] named US … we’ve come here and we’ve been able to stay here and live here because of their generosity ...and I think … being Pakeha’s honouring that … it’s the title that’s been given by THEM to US.
The reciprocal nature of this relationship was emphasised through the
offer of political support for Maori. Spoonley (1995a, 1995b) and
Spoonley and Larner (1995) emphasised the political nature of the
relationship, arguing that the label becomes a deliberately constructed
identity for those members of the majority group of European descent
who want to express their understanding of, and support for, Maori claims
for self actualisation. While Pearson and Sissons (1997, p. 79) concluded
from their research that the political implications of a Pakeha identity
were “surprisingly weak”, and Gibson (2006) argued that it is no longer
politically radical to claim a Pakeha identity, more than half of the people I
interviewed indicated that they were making a political statement through
claiming a Pakeha identity.
Debra: I think it [the decision to identify as Pakeha] was about a commitment to the Treaty for me as ... a white woman and acknowledging the indigenous people of this country ...I think it’s more just who I am as a person and ... it is about my political beliefs.
Joy: It’s [identifying as Pakeha] become a little bit of a ... political sticking point for me.
Suze: I identify as Pakeha definitely as a political ... way of explaining how I see the world.
Using the imagery of a relationship with Maori has become a recognised
means of describing a Pakeha identity. As discussed in Chapter Three,
Michael King (1985, 1991) was one of the first writers to use the notion of
a relationship to define his own Pakeha identity. In the process of rejecting
a connection to Europe, he argued that his Pakeha identity had emerged
from interaction with Maori people and culture. This argument was
52
reiterated throughout his edited anthology; Pakeha: The quest for identity
in New Zealand (King, 1991)
The extent to which this ideology has since come to dominate the
discourse of a Pakeha identity is exemplified through various research
projects with Pakeha, all concluding that in identifying in this way,
participants were expressing a relationship with Maori (Hepi, 2008; Liu,
2005; Pearson & Sissons, 1997). The relational conception of a Pakeha
identity has furthermore been promoted by all of these authors as
particularly positive within the context of support for Maori self-
determination. Its repetition throughout the literature indicates that,
along with a rejection of Europe, the interview participants were drawing
upon available discourses concerning a Pakeha identity.
Belonging in New Zealand. A number of writers have interpreted the
rejection of Europe and subsequent expression of a relationship with the
colonised as a means of not only reconciling the past with the present, but
of constructing a narrative of belonging in New Zealand (Bell, 2006, 2009;
Dyson, 1996; Lawn, 1994). The rejection of an association with Europe is
intrinsically related to the European settlement of this country. The British
colonisation of New Zealand inarguably had dire consequences for the
indigenous population. For many of those I interviewed, finding an
expression of their own identity necessitated a coming to terms with New
Zealand’s colonial past and the damage colonisation has inflicted upon
Maori people and their culture. For some learning about this damage was
an integral part of their decision to identify as Pakeha.
Suze: It’s [Pakeha] a word which encapsulates the history of … how Europeans came to live in New Zealand.
Debra: [Seeing] a timeline of all the breaches of the Treaty ... laid out ... was just incredible ... it made me think more about who I was.
53
Kurt: What I came to was that being Pakeha is … belonging to this place and part of that belonging is … this respectful relationship with Maori and having cognisance of colonisation and what it’s done to Maori.
The discursive rejection of a connection to the coloniser then becomes a
means of reconciling what Bell (2006, p. 254) has referred to as an
“ontological unease” concerning our “dubious moral origins”. Bell (2009,
p. 159) later termed the adoption of this narrative “a desire for
redemption ... to be like Maori, to be accepted by Maori”. Her argument,
drawing from the international literature on white settler identities, is that
members of this group may seek reassurance from the implications of
colonisation through associating themselves with the indigenous people.
Similarly, Jones (1999, p. 310) has argued that for some members of the
dominant white majority in New Zealand, an “infatuation with access to
and unity with the other” can represent a desire for absolution. This
infatuation has been interpreted as an attempt to renounce a Western
heritage and claim indigeneity for Pakeha (Dyson, 1996; Lawn, 1994). For
Lawn (1994, p. 300) the “narrative of disowning one’s parents and
imagining oneself adopted” often comes at the expense of any engagement
with the consequences of colonisation for the white majority - the
privileges inherited from a colonial past.
Lawn (1994) and Dyson (1996) were addressing the preoccupation with
Pakeha identity shared by a number of white New Zealand writers during
the early 1990s. They were particularly critical of the focus on a shared
connection with Maori which they saw as overwhelming an
acknowledgement of Pakeha whiteness. Their argument was not that a
Pakeha identity is not a good thing to claim, but rather that, we should
examine the term, and our use of it, critically in order to ask does its use
challenge existing power structures or instead further perpetuate white
54
hegemony in New Zealand? It is this position that I want to consider in
the second part of this chapter as, having examined what participants felt a
Pakeha self-identity might express, I turn to consider what the discourse of
a relationship with Maori can potentially obscure.
The “Empty Alterity” of a Pakeha Identity
Not Maori. A number of writers have argued that both Maori and Pakeha
can only be understood in terms of their relationship to each other. This
position stems from the etymology of both words and their origin in the
period of New Zealand history immediately following European contact.
Prior to this time, Maori had no need for a communal term and instead
identified themselves through their affiliations to tribal or family group.
Following the arrival of the settlers, however the words Maori meaning
“normal or ordinary” and Pakeha gained traction as both groups found the
need for terms to collectively describe each other (Bell, 1996; Hepi, 2008,
p. 9).
Significantly, within a discussion of self identity it is not inappropriate for
Pakeha to define ourselves in relation to Maori. All identity is relational to
a certain extent as we seek to define who we are by comparing ourselves
to other people (see for example discussions of social identity theory in:
Stets & Burke, 2000; Wetherell & Potter, 1992) and the construction of
identity is always dependent upon the identification of difference to, and
relationships with, those who are other (Hall, 1996). The main deficiency
of a relational definition of Pakeha emerged however, when it became
apparent that this was not one aspect of the definition but instead was the
predominant reason participants gave for identifying as Pakeha.
An examination of the international whiteness literature reveals that a
white majority describing itself in relation to an ethnic minority is not
unusual in the context of Western societies. White people, it is argued,
55
frequently use the race or ethnicities of others in order to define their own
(Dalton, 2008; Dyer, 1997; Frankenberg, 1993; McKinney & Feagin, 2003;
O'Brien, 2001, 2007; Roediger, 1998). Critical whiteness theory points to
the inexperience of many white people at seeing themselves as raced. This
so-called invisibility of whiteness, to be discussed in more depth in
Chapter Five, results in race or ethnicity being associated only with ethnic
minorities and consequently whiteness becoming synonymous with the
human norm (Dei, et al., 2004; Dyer, 1997; Frankenberg, 1993; hooks,
1997; McIntosh, 1988). Ultimately then as Dalton (2008, p. 15) explained
white people do not think of themselves in terms of what they are, but
instead in terms of being “not Black, not Asian American ... not Native
American” or in this country, not Maori.
In 1996 the International Social Survey Programme conducted by Massey
University surveyed the reasons behind a decision to claim a Pakeha
identity and revealed that the majority (62%) did so because they felt the
term “best describes a New Zealander who is non Maori” (Pearson &
Sissons, 1997, p. 70). This particular wording was also prevalent during
the interviews I conducted with more than a third of the people I
interviewed answering my initial question “why do you identify as
Pakeha” with the rationale that it was because they were not Maori.
Debra: So I identify myself as somebody who’s not Maori.
Neil: I have no Maori ancestry so I … whakapapa to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Rae: I’m not from Europe, I’m not. So therefore I’m not European. By definition. And I’m not Maori.
Elinor: So I … say I’m Pakeha so immediately you know that I’m not Maori.
While it has been argued that the creation of Pakeha as an identity
functions to “mark” the majority group in a way that ends its invisibility
56
(Spoonley, 1995a, p. 55), defining ourselves in terms of what we are not
does not illuminate exactly who we are. While comfortable “marking”
themselves as Pakeha, when it was no longer appropriate to define their
identity in relational terms to Maori participants were often unable to
articulate what it was that made them uniquely Pakeha. This is what
Maclean (1996, p. 110) describes as the void at the centre of this Pakeha
identity indicating that much of what it means to be Pakeha still remains
invisible to those who are using the term to describe themselves.
Pakeha = white? One attribute that is quite clearly unique to Pakeha is
whiteness. A lack of engagement with whiteness in the interview
transcripts however lends support to the argument that this is not a
preoccupation in the creation of Pakeha self-identity (Dyson, 1996;
Gibson, 2006; Lawn, 1994). While Pakeha have embraced the word itself,
the Maori definition of that word has not been so readily accepted. Only
one of those interviewed during the course of my research, answered with
the seemingly obvious answer that he was white in reply to my question
regarding the decision to identify as Pakeha. Indeed for the majority of
participants, the term Pakeha, while suggesting that the bearer was white,
was definitely not synonymous with the word.
Elinor: I’m white but ... it doesn’t it doesn’t mean anything in terms of what I’m trying to say about myself...but Pakeha says it both. It says that ... I’m not Maori [and] it probably says that I’m white.
Marcie: You can’t look at someone and say “you’re Pakeha” because you don’t know what blood they’ve got in them but you can look at someone and say “they’re white”.
Suze: We can categorise ourselves based on skin colour but Pakeha’s … interesting cause it still HAS that connotation for me but its … something in between, because of the language I think.
57
A discussion of respondent’s attitudes towards whiteness is crucial to this
thesis and will be presented in Chapter Five. Here, however, I use these
examples to emphasise that the Maori meaning of the word Pakeha has not
been assumed with the same enthusiasm as the word itself. This supports
Hepi’s (2008, pp. 60-61) conclusion that “it is those European New
Zealanders that identify as Pakeha, and not Maori, who are developing the
term Pakeha to mean something particular and characteristic to European
New Zealanders”. It is the shift in meaning that has taken place since the
word’s adoption as a self descriptor that I turn to now.
The Appropriation of the Term Pakeha
While the term appropriation is often used in post-colonial theory to refer
to a colonial society’s adoption of elements of imperial culture, I use it here
in its broader sense to indicate the usurping of language and cultural
aspects by a dominant power (Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 2000). Maori
constitute a minority within New Zealand and, as will be discussed in
detail in Chapter Six, social statistics demonstrate that they are often
disadvantaged within this country. Yet despite the position that Maori
occupy as a group, as the adoption of the koru as symbol of the national
airline and the haka to herald the start of each international rugby match
demonstrate, it is often to Maori that white New Zealanders turn to
differentiate ourselves in an international context.
The appropriateness of the dominant majority using Maori language and
culture in order to define a distinctive New Zealand identity has come to
be increasingly questioned over the past few decades. Linda Tuhiwai
Smith (1999, p. 89) has critiqued a practice she has termed “trading the
Other” in which Maori culture is offered for consumption with “no concern
58
for the peoples who originally produced the ideas or images”. In response
to an Air New Zealand advertisement which featured the Maori song
“Pokarekare Ana”, Lawyer Moana Jackson (as cited in Pihama & Waerea-i-
te-rangi Smith, 1997) issued a challenge to white New Zealanders:
But that song has almost become a Pakeha anthem and my
response to Pakeha is to say sing your own songs, why don’t you
sing your own songs to define who you are, why to define your
uniqueness do you have to take something more off us? ( p. 31)
Maori Party Co Leader Dr Pita Sharples has also made it quite clear that
the Maori language is an important issue in terms of cultural
appropriation, arguing “indigenous peoples are entitled to the recognition
of the full ownership, control and protection of the cultural and intellectual
property ...[and] that includes Maori words and names” ("Maori Party
raises issue of cultural appropriation," 2005).
Dr Sharples was arguing in Parliament against the exploitation of the
Maori language for economic gain, and while there is no financial
advantage in self identifying as Pakeha, it is clearly viewed by those I
interviewed as advantageous, allowing the adoption of a non racist subject
position.
Kurt: He [my son] he’s … part of that environment where … some people lack tolerance and other people have lots of tolerance … and we sort of explore these issues at home quite a bit so he’s happy to call himself a Pakeha.
Mark: So I guess that’s …associated with what I would call their [his family members] resistance to categories like Pakeha …there’s these … cultural prejudices that they have that … I would say I wouldn’t share.
Rae: If you really start to try and define what it means to be Pakeha I think … part of it would be you’ve done a little bit of work in that area … you’ve understood the biculturalness of New Zealand.
59
Selena: I think people who are a little bit more in touch with ... Maoridom or a little bit more in touch with New Zealand’s history would identify as Pakeha.
Identifying as Pakeha then allows us to position ourselves, in the words of
the participants, as being without “cultural prejudice” but being “tolerant”,
bicultural” and “in touch with Maoridom”.
I began this chapter with a list of negative expressions that have been
attributed to the word Pakeha by members of the white majority who
reject its use. It is apparent however that it is not only those white New
Zealanders objecting to the term, who have adopted a new definition for
the word. From a neutral descriptor in the Maori language, the word has
been imbued with positive meaning for many of us who use it to describe
ourselves. This meaning however, has the potential to conceal more about
those who use it to describe themselves than it reveals. In particular it has
little to say about current power relations within New Zealand society and
the structural inequalities from which members of the dominant white
majority benefit.
A Consideration of Power
In his critical examination of Australian multiculturalism, Ghassan Hage
(1998) examined the sociological implications of a call for white tolerance
within an Australian multicultural society. He proposes that when white
people are asked to be tolerant of others, they do not lose their power to
be intolerant and it is this issue of power that multiculturalism fails to
engage with. For Hage (1998, p. 94) multiculturalism in Australia is “not
about making the powerful less so, it is about inviting …[white people] not
to exercise their power”. The theme of acceptance of others both conceals
and reinforces the power to accept.
60
Similarly then a discussion of Pakeha in relation to Maori needs also to be
positioned within a discussion of power in contemporary New Zealand
society. Questions of power were however, overwhelmed in the
interviews by the implication that a mutually beneficial relationship exists
and that primarily the adoption of the label Pakeha is in Maori interests.
“Good” Pakeha who are “tolerant”, bicultural” and “in touch with
Maoridom” were by implication contrasted with those white New
Zealanders who have “cultural prejudice”. This dualistic positioning then
obscures the power that members of the dominant white majority wield
within New Zealand society, defining “’racism’ in the sense of
interpersonal interactions [rather than] ‘racism’ as differential access to
power” (Frankenberg, 1993, p. 185).
While some individual Pakeha may have personal relationships with
individual Maori, the connection with Maori expressed by those I
interviewed does not exist in any tangible sense. Indeed what emerged
from the data and the literature was the illusory nature of this connection
with Maori. I use the word illusory here in reference to Benedict
Anderson’s (1983, p. 15) term “imagined community” coined in relation to
nations and nationality. He argues that these are social constructs, created
in the imagination of people who see themselves as belonging to a nation.
He argues that even in very small nations, people do not know most of
those who share their nationality yet they see themselves as sharing a
connection with these people. In this respect Pakeha belong to an
“imagined community” which also includes Maori but excludes other white
New Zealanders who may not identify as Pakeha.
Conclusion
Bedggood (1997, p. 84) has described the taking up of a Pakeha identity as
“tinged with self congratulation” and while this may seem particularly
61
disparaging, it seems fair to say that it is viewed by many of those who self
identify as Pakeha as a good thing to be.
Joy: I’ve kind of done it to be a bit bloody minded. … I’m going to call myself Pakeha because I find the people [who want to say] … New Zealand European or white or … I’m just a Kiwi, ... get over it ... There’s nothing wrong with the word Pakeha so that’s … my decision to associate myself with that word. [It’s] to try and make it a positive.
Neil: Pakeha is a term that I … identify with considerable … pride now really.
Rae: Pakeha’s a good word, a nice word, a strong word and it’s clear. And it’s purely New Zealand, but it’s not ... New Zealander.
In this chapter I have sought to contrast two aspects of a Pakeha identity;
what the participants felt identifying as Pakeha said about them with what
analysis of the transcripts revealed it did not say. A strong theme to
emerge from the interviews was the notion of a Pakeha identity as
representative of a relationship with both the land originally occupied by
Maori and with Maori as a people. Yet despite, or perhaps because, this
relationship is not real in any tangible sense it becomes difficult to
quantify. Beyond the metaphor of a relationship, little else of substance
emerged as the participants described their Pakeha identities. Pakeha
were defined as being neither European nor Maori as, in line with
international whiteness research, participants presented themselves in
terms of what they were not. Furthermore the adoption of the Maori word
for white by members of the dominant majority, who in the process
change its meaning, is potentially problematic within the context of
existing power structures in New Zealand. I address these issues of
whiteness and power in the following chapter.
62
Chapter 5
The Reification of Whiteness
While the writing concerning whiteness is united by the aim to draw
attention to the meaning of the word, what has emerged, as seen in the
literature review, is that whiteness means many different things to
different people. It has been described as invisible to white people (Dyer,
1997; Frankenberg, 1993), but clearly able to be seen by those who are not
(Ahmed, 2007; Sue, 2004a). It has been described as privilege (McIntosh,
1988) and as terror (hooks, 1997). The aim of this chapter is to
understand how whiteness was understood by the research participants
and to explore the implications of this.
The chapter is divided into three sections. In the first I look at whiteness
as it was described during the interviews. What emerged was that for
many of the participants, whiteness appeared to be associated with a set of
predetermined, inflexible and overwhelmingly negative characteristics. In
the second part of the chapter I examine how this reification of whiteness
may impact on the participants’ recognition of their place within dominant
white culture in New Zealand. This is then further explored in terms of the
research question: what is the relationship between the usage of the word
“Pakeha” by some white New Zealanders and their understanding of
whiteness and privilege?
Interpretations of Whiteness
63
Dislike of the word ‘white’. In Chapter Four, I proposed that for the
participants in this study, the meaning of the word Pakeha, in the context
of self identification, had evolved far beyond the Maori meaning for the
word – white. Whether this new meaning incorporates the original
definition or not is one of the questions I attempt to answer in this thesis.
As discussed in the literature review, scholarship on the subject is divided
with some writers choosing not to engage with whiteness (King, 1991;
Pearson, 1989; Spoonley, 1995a, 1995b; Spoonley & Larner, 1995) and
others arguing that a preference by some in the white majority, for the
term Pakeha, is motivated by a desire to avoid the negative associations of
the word white (Dyson, 1996; Lawn, 1994).
Analysis of the interview transcripts revealed a general discomfort
amongst many of those interviewed, towards the use of white as a self
label. For some, dislike of the word was very strong. Eve referred to it as
making her “skin crawl”. She attributed her strong feelings about the
word to her German ancestry and the associations it had for her with
policy promoted by the Nazi regime during the Second World War.
Eve: I have never EVER considered myself white and I think that may have to do with coming from Germany ... a country that sort of shouldered the universal guilt of eradicating millions of people.
Yet even those born and raised in New Zealand had little affection for the
word.
Neil: [When I think of white] I think of 1960s Mississippi, I think … there is identifiably a discourse about superiority, control. Control of business, control of land. It is such a[n] absolutely kind of STARTLINGLY violent story.
Joy: It [white] makes me think of the 60s. It makes me think of Martin Luther King, it makes me think of no blacks no whites and ... apartheid in South Africa.
64
Suze described the shock she experienced upon hearing herself described
as white and when asked if she ever identified as white Ann replied “no
[be]cause all I can see with that is skinhead”. For Elinor, as for a number
of the other participants, hearing herself called white by Maori would be
seen as an accusation.
Elinor: If they were talking about me as a white woman I would assume that they were about to criticise my ... unjust power and position.
Ann: If someone said “you white woman” it would sit uncomfortably with me because I would think that they would be equating me with all the people who’ve been oppressors.
Others did not articulate such strong opposition to the term but still felt
there was a “stigma” attached to it, expressing concern that the term could
be used in a “derogatory” way.
Reification of whiteness. Research with white people both in New Zealand
and overseas has suggested that the participants are not unique in wishing
to disassociate themselves from the word white (Frankenberg, 1993;
Gibson, 2006; Goldstein as cited in McDermott & Samson, 2005; O'Brien,
2001, 2007; Sue, 2004a, 2004b). Goldstein (as cited in: McDermott &
Samson, 2005) noted a preference amongst highly educated white
Americans, for the label Caucasian instead of white, proposing it as
indicative of a desire to distance themselves from a word associated with
racial dominance. Bonnett (2000b) has similarly noted antiracist
organisations in North America and the United Kingdom rejecting a white
identity which, he contended, is constructed in opposition to an antiracist
identity.
65
He proposed furthermore, that this rejection is justified by a significant
portion of whiteness scholarship that has imbued the word white with a
set of unchanging and indeed unchangeable characteristics. M. Anderson
(2003, p. 28) likewise targeted whiteness literature in which “whiteness
comes to mean just about everything associated with racial domination”.
As the examples from my own research cited above demonstrate,
participants similarly defended their dismissal of a white identity on the
basis of its negative associations, utilising a discourse which clearly reified
whiteness. The word white emerged in the transcripts as having little
meaning aside from supremacy and domination and its relevance for many
of the participants, particularly those who wished to demonstrate their
commitment to antiracism, was rejected.
Resistance to race. In her research with white women in New Zealand,
Gibson (2006) argued that avoidance of the term white was an effect of a
“colour/ power evasive discourse”, a term originally used by Frankenberg
(1993) to describe an attitude which avoids acknowledging difference in
order to affirm that everyone is equal. This is also expressed as “colour
blindness” and is readily identified through a discourse of sameness; to
acknowledge difference is to demonstrate prejudice. As a discourse often
utilised by members of the white majority to discuss race (see for
example: Frankenberg, 1993; O'Brien, 2001), this talk was identifiable
throughout the interviews, with participants at various times attempting
to distinguish the unifying characteristics of different New Zealand
ethnicities in ways which demonstrated an avoidance of difference.
Yet, despite the recurrence of this discourse, it was not the most dominant
to emerge during the section of the interviews in which we discussed
whiteness. More prevalent was the utilisation of a discourse which
acknowledged ethnic and cultural differences within New Zealand but
66
rejected the relevance of the terms black and white as expressions of this
difference. This at times contradictory stance - participants were open to
expressions of difference, but opposed to using skin colour as a way of
differentiating - is apparent in the following examples as participants
construct their arguments in almost identical ways to suggest that
identifying by skin colour can be divisive.
Kurt: You know white can become whities ... if you flip that over there would be the ... darkies wouldn’t there? But ...that’s sort of back to that us /them... So that in a way, that’s why Pakeha is such a lovely term because it’s a term that... completely breaks down that we/ they thing.
Suze: If our society was able to move away from ... categorising people in terms of their skin colour then you know the ... world would be a better place. Because that’s the thing, we can categorise ourselves based on skin colour but Pakeha’s kind of ... in between, because of the language I think.
Ann: I feel a bit uncomfortable with those [the terms black and white]. I’m much more comfortable with Pakeha /Maori, THAT kind of dichotomy ... because black ... [and] white are so ... confrontational.
Elinor I think Pakeha for me … is … a less extreme term than white because you’ve got … whites and blacks, not that I necessarily see that as being the case here [in New Zealand], but white …it’s a term that you use … in conflict.
In her research with white antiracists O’Brien (2001, p.55) demonstrated
that a colour blind discourse can often co-exist with a reflexive approach
to issues of racism in a way that individuals “both are and are not”
resistant to seeing themselves as raced. Similarly many of the participants
in my own research readily acknowledged the cultural differences
between Maori and non Maori but to distinguish on the basis of skin colour
suggested a racial intolerance which appeared to be irreconcilably
problematic.
67
A resistance to race and preference for ethnicity was identified in Chapter
Two as a significant discourse within the New Zealand literature
concerning dominant majority identity. Its presence within the interview
data was obvious as participants presented a Pakeha identity that clearly
did not encompass whiteness. I noted in Chapter Three, the reservations
expressed by a number of the participants at my focus on whiteness and
its perceived irrelevance within a context of white privilege. For these
people, whiteness as skin colour has become detached from whiteness as
privilege and analysis of this forms an important part of the discussion in
Chapter Six. Within the context of identity, however the dismissal of
whiteness, or what Moreton-Robinson (2004, p. 82) referred to as an
attempt to “deracialise” identity, is a failure to acknowledge that skin
colour is an intrinsic component of the way people within Western
societies construct a sense of themselves and others. Groups within these
societies, Dyer (1997, p. 44) argued, need to be “visibly recognisable”;
without such recognition the interplay of power becomes seriously
impeded.
The discourse dismissing the relevance of whiteness to a discussion of
New Zealand identity is problematic because it overlooks the defining
factor that race has played, and continues to play, in this country’s national
development (Ballara, 1986). Colvin (2008, p. 54) proposed instead that
any discussion of this development must also consider the role of
whiteness in determining “social identity, social knowledge and social
power”. In the following section, I consider these aspects and their
interrelation in contemporary New Zealand society, in order to emphasise
the significance that whiteness brings to bear on social identity in this
country.
Whiteness in New Zealand
68
Sara Ahmed (2007 p. 154) proposed that whiteness is “an orientation that
puts certain things within reach”. Influenced by the work of philosopher
and revolutionary Frantz Fanon, she argued that colonisation has
produced a society in which white people have the capacity to attain
certain advantages more easily than those who are not. In New Zealand, as
in many Western countries, whiteness has come to dominate cultural
space and its subsequent normalisation within that space offers significant
advantages to those who are white (Moreton-Robinson, 2004). It has been
proposed that institutions in this country put privilege within the
dominant majority’s “reach” by positioning white culture, values and
beliefs as standard while, at the same time, failing to accept cultural
difference or promote opportunities for the expression of such difference
(Awatere, 1984; Ministerial Advisory Committee on a Maori Perspective
for the Department of Social Welfare, 1986). While dominant white
culture is able to represent itself as the universal human norm, the
relationship between whiteness, power and the production of cultural
knowledge remains ignored.
White cultural capital. The social asset that whiteness puts within the reach
of white people has been described as cultural or symbolic capital (Clarke
& Garner, 2010; Hage, 1998; Lewis, 2003). Drawing from the work of
French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, Hage (1998) defined cultural capital
as a shared social language that enables us to make sense of and
communicate with the world around us. As the majority, white people
have the privilege of being able to live in a society that reinforces the
centrality of a white subject position and rewards white cultural
knowledge. In other words, whiteness provides a form of capital that can
be exploited to gain access to further resources, power and privilege.
69
Many of us in the white majority are so accustomed to having access to
this cultural capital, that it has become an integral, yet invisible part of our
lives. It is as Ahmed (2007, p.156) described it “a habit”. On the very rare
occasions when we find ourselves in situations where it cannot be utilised,
we often interpret this, not as putting us on an even footing with those
who are not white, but instead as placing us at a significant disadvantage.
In a New Zealand context, Alison Jones (1999, 2001) highlighted this
imagined disadvantage when writing about the resistance she
encountered from white students placed in a situation where they were
unable to draw upon their white cultural capital. As a university lecturer,
concerned that a course she was teaching had become dominated by the
“words, assumptions and interests of the Pakeha students and lecturer”,
she divided the class by ethnicity into two streams (Jones, 1999, p. 300).
These streams, consisting of mainly white students in one and Maori and
Pacific Island students in the other, were taught separately for the
duration of the course. The decision to divide the two groups was
overwhelmingly supported by the Maori and Pacific Island group but
negatively received by the white students whom Jones (1999, p. 311)
observed resisting being “suddenly displaced from the unproblematic
centre of knowing what counts as knowledge in the university”. The
following example cited from a white student’s journal highlighted this:
The activity in which we were asked to pick out and comment on an
aspect of the meeting house [marae] made me feel extremely
uncomfortable and stupid. I thought it served to emphasise rather
than diminish my status as an “outsider”. The activity assumed a
prior knowledge which I did not have ... I left shortly after the end
of this activity having decided that I did not belong. I have difficulty
in seeing the relevance of this visit. (Jones, 2001, p. 282)
70
The student had been put into a position that privileged Maori cultural
knowledge at the same time as it challenged her definition of what
constituted learning. Her whiteness no longer provided cultural capital or
what she termed “prior knowledge” and as a result she felt excluded from
the learning process.
Similarly, within my own research group, a number of participants
struggled to articulate the ways in which their whiteness benefited them,
instead focusing upon how it served to put them at a disadvantage. Selena,
working with Maori and Pacific Island families, felt that in operating
within a different culture, she was often out of her “comfort zone” and
didn’t always “understand quite what [was] going on”. Both Suze and Neil
described situations when they had acted in ways around Maori which
were culturally inappropriate and the discomfort they experienced upon
realising their behaviour was inadvertently, in Neil’s words “ill considered
[and] stupid” and in Suze’s “ignorant”. What was significant about all of
these examples is that they were given at a point in the interviews when
we were discussing white privilege. That is, when the participants were
asked if they could provide examples of how their whiteness had benefited
them, they recounted situations where being white was not an advantage
and they were not able to utilise their cultural capital. They were aware of
their shortcomings when operating as outsiders within environments that
privileged another culture’s knowledge but at the same time, even when
prompted, were not able to articulate the ways in which their insider roles
as members of the white majority culture had proved to be an asset.
White culture as “no culture”. An explanation appears to be that many of the
participants were unaware of the extent to which they were part of white
culture. There are two important aspects to this. The first can be
demonstrated in an often repeated theme in the whiteness literature; that
71
many members of the dominant majority find it difficult to acknowledge
their occupation of cultural space (Bell, 1996; Black, 2010; Dyer, 1997;
Frankenberg, 1993; Gibson, 2006; Spoonley, 1988; Wepa, 2005). This also
emerged in my own data as a number of participants struggled to describe
the characteristics of the culture with which they identified.
Ann: We’re a bit lost in that respect and that’s why I think so many of us who may well have a closer connection in working with Maori maybe are quite happy to borrow so much.
Joy: In terms of New Zealand Pakeha culture I’m struggling to identify anything that I can really think of as truly ... fitting into that bracket.
Neil: I don’t know if I want to use the word culture. There ... [are] habits that ...[we have] we accumulate private wealth, we try to persuade everybody else that that’s a good idea. Culture? I don’t know if it ... qualifies as culture. It’s almost like pseudo culture.
In her research with white women, Frankenberg (1993, p. 192) found that
for members of the white majority, their own culture was often perceived
as “no culture”. This, she proposed, is because culture is frequently
defined, in a very narrow way, as the customs associated with ethnic
minorities. Instead members of the majority often do not see themselves
as having culture because their own practices are considered to be
“normal”. In other words culture is defined as something that “others”
have and as such has no role to play in their own daily lives.
White culture as “bad culture”. While Neil was hesitant to describe the
“habits” he noted as culture, others were not so reticent. For Rae, white
culture is about “racism ... superiority, power”. Suze described white
culture in relation to “money, power and privilege”. Mark defined the
72
majority culture in New Zealand as being “blind and prejudiced”. A
number of the women interviewed distanced themselves from a culture
which they saw as distinguished by its androcentrism.
Debra: I think … as a woman that a lot of what is defined as our culture doesn’t actually fit with me as a woman.
Rae: When I think of white culture I think of white male dominance.
Eve: It’s very stereotypical ... patriarchal ... very strong male dominated beer drinking, rugby playing.
This reification of whiteness and white culture into characteristics which
participants clearly do not associate with themselves, is the second
explanation as to why many of the participants may have had trouble in
locating themselves within dominant culture. Discursively this can be
seen as a rhetorical device which enabled them to separate themselves
from others within the dominant white majority. Participants had become
so practised in disassociating themselves from whiteness that they were
unaccustomed to seeing how proficient they were in white culture. This
device forms an important element of the theme of separation which
recurred throughout the data and which will be developed further in
Chapter Seven.
Here, this disassociation also illustrates Frankenberg’s (1993, p. 202)
description of whiteness as having a “slipperiness” to it, moving as it does
between “‘no culture’ … ‘normal culture’ … ‘bad culture’ and back again”.
By considering white culture only in terms of its difference from the daily
reality of their lives, participants were able to argue that they themselves
were somehow cultureless. When I asked Suze if she felt that the culture
she had characterised as “money, power and privilege” represented her,
she replied that while she understood she could not “escape ... [her]
73
heritage”, she tried “not to identify with it”. In other words “bad culture”
has transformed back into being “no culture” at all.
Addressing this narrow view of culture, cultural theorist, Stuart Hall
(1996, p.439) has instead defined culture as a mode of “common sense”
peculiar to the social group to which we belong. It is this common sense
that I believe Wepa (2005) is referring to when she wrote in a New
Zealand context:
Our way of living is our culture. It’s our taken-for grantedness that
determines and defines our culture. The way we brush our teeth,
the way we bury people, the way we express ourselves through our
art, religion, eating habits, rituals, humour, science, law and sport;
the way we celebrate occasions (from 21sts, to weddings, to
birthdays) is our culture. All these actions we carry out consciously
and unconsciously. (p. 31)
Frankenberg’s (1993) definition of culture also incorporated socially
acquired knowledge and practices that have been learnt through the
experience of simply living but added to this the theoretical element of
culture as a way of seeing and interpreting the world. Culture is
manifested within the organisations and structures within society and
transformed through our interactions with each other and these systems.
Culture is what shapes our view of ourselves, each other and society
around us. This perspective then begins to illuminate the role that white
culture has to play in the everyday lives of all white people and
significantly, that all “white ...[people] are, by definition, practitioners of
white culture” (Frankenberg, 1993, p. 228).
Justifying a Pakeha Identity
74
In stark contrast to this assertion, the majority of participants went to
some rhetorical lengths to distance themselves from a white New Zealand
culture, which was overwhelmingly defined in negative terms. Their
rationalisation for rejecting the relevance of whiteness has both
similarities to, and significant differences from, that employed in the
rejection of a European identity. While participants could not claim that
they were not white in the same way as they were able to argue that they
were not European their construction of argument, in particular their
utilisation of “contrary themes”, resonated with Billig’s (2001, p. 218)
observation noted in the previous chapter that contradictions are often
unproblematically ignored in everyday discourse.
In response to my question, would she prefer to be labelled a white
woman or a Pakeha woman, Marcie replied with the following:
Marcie: If someone was to describe me as a white woman they would probably be making a huge big generalised statement about my ability to be accepted on face value at something… or my chances of getting an interview at something or … it would go along with a big general statement of probably superficial perception… because it doesn’t really mean anything.
Claire: Yeah but then it’s quite interesting because you said it doesn’t mean anything but it almost sounds like it does mean something, like it does have some meaning attached to it?
Marcie: Yeah meaning in … an accepted way. I guess … it’s got … superficial meaning so it means that you might be accepted because you’re white … but it doesn’t mean that they know anything else about you.
A significant contradiction is evident here with Marcie arguing that the
word white is meaningless and that as a white person she may have a
differential access to social power. This contradictory argument was
repeated in a number of the interview transcripts with other participants
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similarly explaining their rejection of the label white on the basis that it
lacked meaning but at the same time implying that there was something
very significant about the word.
The employment of this argument within a discourse of the reification of
whiteness further worked to increase the persuasiveness of the argument
for a Pakeha identity. As Wetherell and Potter (1992) have demonstrated,
accounts are constructed not only to argue a particular point (for Marcie,
the unsuitability of the label white) but to contrast with an alternative
viewpoint (the suitability of the label Pakeha). Irrespective of the
contradictions inherent in her reasoning, Marcie’s argument - that the
label white was both meaningless and loaded with meaning – was
contrived in order to emphasise the appropriateness of her choice to
identify as Pakeha.
The rationalisation of the rejection of white culture and identity obscures
an important ideological position. For a number of the participants, a
focus on whiteness during the interviews caused obvious discomfort
revealing a resistance to the concept of race, as highlighted earlier in this
chapter. For Joy, the terms black and white reinforced “divisions purely
based on colour” and, as a number of the participants argued, the term
Pakeha becomes a way of avoiding classifications that are constructed in
this way offering a means of discursively evading an engagement with the
issue of race.
The legacy of colonisation in New Zealand is that of a dominant majority
culture founded on beliefs of white racial supremacy. As highlighted in the
previous chapter, for many of the participants, knowledge of the
circumstances surrounding the colonisation of this country had a
significant impact upon their formation of identity. For the same reason,
an affiliation with dominant culture has become, in the eyes of many of the
participants, something undesirable. Bell (2006) referred to white New
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Zealand culture as having a fragility about it, coming as it does from
somewhere else and being tainted by the violence associated with
colonisation. She contrasted this with the perception of more authentic
cultures and their emphasis on the relationship between people and
geographical place (Bell, 2006). A Pakeha identity becomes a way of
aligning oneself geographically to New Zealand – a discursive relationship
emphasised in Chapter Four- while at the same time avoiding links to a
culture with all of its colonising implications. In other words a Pakeha
identity is instrumental in evading engagement with white dominant
majority culture.
Conclusion
The purpose of this chapter was to consider whiteness within a New
Zealand context and particularly in terms of its meaning for the interview
participants. It became very clear that a significant number of the
participants had reified whiteness to the extent that it no longer had any
relevance for them personally. I do not disagree that whiteness is
associated with supremacy, domination and colonisation, but in this
chapter I argue that it is not just about these things. For members of the
white majority in contemporary New Zealand society, I propose that
whiteness provides a cultural capital putting a number of clearly
identifiable, and importantly, inescapable privileges within their reach. To
some extent, all white people in New Zealand have access to this capital
through belonging to the dominant majority. Within the context of the
research question, I have sought to ask if participants were able to
articulate their own whiteness. Taking whiteness as I have defined it here,
however as inextricably linked with white cultural capital, the answer
seems to be that often they cannot. A Pakeha identity moreover appeared
to offer a discursive means of obscuring a connection with whiteness and
subsequently with dominant white culture in New Zealand.
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Chapter 6
White Privilege
In the previous chapter I examined how, for many of the participants,
whiteness had been reified to the extent that it was seen to have little
implication for them personally. This is significant in terms of the
whiteness literature which argues that white privilege will remain hidden
as long as whiteness remains unacknowledged (Colvin, 2009; Dei, et al.,
2004; Dyer, 1997; Frankenberg, 1993; Gibson, 2006; hooks, 1997;
McIntosh, 1988; Morrison, 1992; Sue, 2004a, 2004b). The narrow view of
culture that emerged in Chapter Five is consistent with this literature
suggesting that many in the white majority are unable to recognise the
culture to which they belong and is responsible, Dyer (1997) argued, for
the difficulties many white people have in understanding the way in which
white privilege operates. In believing that we have “no culture”, he argues
“we can’t see that we have anything that accounts for our position of
privilege and power” (Dyer, 1997, p. 9).
In this chapter I focus on the concept of privilege. In the first half I
examine the research participant’s interpretations of white privilege. A
disengagement from personal privilege was the dominant theme to
emerge from the data and was seen through the employment of three
strategies; utilising a discourse of racism, a disinclination for talk about
personal privilege and the rhetorical separation of self from other white
people. In the second part of the chapter, I examine the intersection
between institutional and personal privilege. I propose that there are a
multitude of privileges available to white New Zealanders because we live
in a society which is buttressed by institutions offering significant
advantages to members of the dominant white majority (Awatere, 1984;
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Consedine & Consedine, 2005; Ministerial Advisory Committee on a Maori
Perspective for the Department of Social Welfare, 1986). My intention is
to offer a contemporary interpretation of white privilege in New Zealand.
Disengagement from Personal Privilege
Given the findings in the previous chapter, as I reviewed the data
concerning privilege I was surprised to hear all of the people I interviewed
acknowledge that, to some degree, being white in New Zealand was an
asset. Indeed many of the participants spoke at length about the
importance of recognising white privilege and stated that they had chosen
to participate in the research because they wanted to explore this further.
I initially saw this as representing a significant contradiction: participants
did not recognise the extent to which whiteness influenced their lives, but
did recognise the existence of white privilege. As I read and reread the
data however, I realised that much of this talk about privilege was of a
particular kind. While the concept of white privilege was recognised to be
very important by the participants, there was little or no focus on how
they as individuals were privileged by their whiteness. Thematic analysis
of this talk led to the identification of a major theme in the data -
disengagement from personal privilege - supporting the findings in
Chapter Five, that the advantages afforded by whiteness are frequently
unseen.
The discourse of racism. Within this theme, I identified a number of
strategies used by the participants to distance themselves from privilege.
Utilising a discourse of racism was the first of these and was evident in the
majority of the transcripts as I noted conversations that began with the
topic of privilege quickly changing to become dominated by talk about the
disadvantage experienced by Maori.
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Claire: And I just wondered if you thought that being white gave you any advantages?
Joy: Oh I do, I totally do. I feel … like this has massively shaped my experiences teaching at XXX and ... especially XXX Primary School which was at this stage a Decile 1 school which is the ...lowest socio economic grading a school can have... I just feel like there’s such a stigma attached to being brown in New Zealand.
Claire: How do you think being white has made your life easier?
Kurt: Oh well here I am sitting in a ... room with you and [you and] I are both highly educated people... there’s a far greater representation of ... us at this level than there are of Maori... and there’s a reason for that ... both of us are likely to have ... well paying jobs and ... we don’t represent a group of people that is overrepresented in the prison system or the welfare system or all of those things.
Claire How [has] privilege … impacted on your life… in what ways [is] your life easier because you’re Pakeha?
Suze I’m free to go to a school that promotes a world view that relates to my heritage and I live in a country where … the indigenous people were … forcibly removed from their land and put in prison and killed and … their language wasn’t valued and school wasn’t appropriate for them and … a lot of discrimination and ... prejudice which has enabled me to have a lot of privilege in terms of my position in society.
In all three of these examples the participants initially seem to engage with
my question but then move the discussion away from privilege. Joy agrees
that being white provides her with advantages but instead of outlining
these, she chooses to focus on the educational disadvantage experienced
by Maori. Kurt turns the conversation away from himself to a more
general commentary about the privilege enjoyed by “us” and then moves
to a discussion of racism. Suze prefixes a generalised statement of her
privilege with specific examples of discrimination against Maori. The
change in focus away from privilege and towards racism dominated
replies to my questions about white privilege in the majority of the
interviews.
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One of the first writers on white privilege Peggy McIntosh (1988, p. 1)
explained, “as a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as
something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to
see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an
advantage”. While the participants were aware of white privilege as a
concept, white people are so used to talking about racism in terms of the
deficit experienced by non whites that it seems it is extremely difficult to
switch focus to the benefits accruing to white skin colour. Despite my
questions being quite specifically about privilege, the answers seemed
inevitably to turn towards racism. Suze summed this up in response to my
question “how does privilege operate?” by joking that “I could probably
give you ways that it doesn’t operate, it’s … MORE ways that it doesn’t
operate”.
Contrary to this, hooks (1989) has argued that racism is less about the
subjugation of people of colour and more about white supremacy.
Similarly Colvin (2009) proposes that the marginalisation of Maori in New
Zealand is the result of white domination and privilege and it is this that
needs to become a focus rather than revisionist histories of colonisation.
The vocabulary of discrimination that we have available to us however
does not make it easy to do this (Wildman & Davis, 2008). No matter how
much the participants said they wanted to talk about privilege, analysis of
the data revealed that they often struggled to do so. The discourse of
racism that ran through the majority of the transcripts, effectively equated
to a discourse of silence about privilege.
Disinclination to talk about personal privilege. The prevalence of this discourse
supports the arguments put forward by international writers on white
privilege, that if it is not looked for, the silence surrounding privilege
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renders it invisible (see for example: McIntosh, 1988; Wildman & Davis,
2008). This was further highlighted by the second strategy to emerge in
the analysis. In addition to the very dominant discourse of racism, white
privilege was frequently obscured in the data by a noticeable
disinclination or an inability to talk about personal privilege (O’Brien,
2001, 2007).
While willing to admit that white people in New Zealand enjoyed
advantages, Joy found it difficult to articulate the ways in which she
personally was privileged eventually conceding that instead she was “less
discriminated against”, a sentiment also echoed by other participants. In
the following excerpt, Mark constructs a similar argument.
Claire: Do you feel then that your life has been made easier because you’re Pakeha?
Mark: It’s a tricky one. All I’d be willing to say is that I’m very aware that there are a lot of … Maori in New Zealand who have it HARD ... Because their LANGUAGE is not valued and that they have often been brought up in poor families, again this is an inherited poverty, and they have it hard and … I certainly recognise that as a reality ...But … I would hesitate to jump in and talk about my privileged situation
Claire So … what would make you hesitate?
Mark Well I guess just that its more complex … in a way that … sure I’ve [been] brought up in a wealthy family, I could go to University and … in a way I’ve benefited FROM being in that situation but I would hesitate to… DOMINATE my talk …using the categories of white privilege …
Claire They might be overly simplistic or?
Mark Yeah I think so yeah. But I was I was only being a little hesitant in talking about me. … I didn’t want that to detract from the reality of hardship or … the fact that there is systematic Maori underprivilege that exists.
Again, as in the examples above, Mark’s talk is dominated by a discourse of
racism but he also appears unable to articulate the ways in which he may
be benefiting from this racism. While acknowledging that he had an
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upbringing free from economic hardship which allowed him to gain a
tertiary education, he demonstrates a reluctance to engage with the idea of
himself as being privileged. Here he readily adopts the position of
acknowledging disadvantage in others - the discrimination faced by Maori
- but struggles to engage with what has been argued to be the root of this
discrimination, privilege for white people as a group, and his own
subsequent privilege as a member of this group.
While some participants, like Joy and Mark, seemed reluctant to engage
with the personal effects of privilege, others acknowledged its existence
but struggled to provide concrete examples.
Claire: Do you believe that white privilege exists?
Mike: Shit yeah shit yeah
Claire: Can you think of any examples of how you’ve been privileged because you’re white?
Mike: Ah not really in New Zealand although ah as an individual? It’s hard to say having only six years of experience in New Zealand
While emphatically acknowledging the existence of white privilege, Mike
became hesitant when I asked how it had benefited him, and concluded
that it was because he, as an immigrant to New Zealand, had not lived here
long enough for it to have an impact. This pattern of struggling to express
personal privilege was repeated throughout a number of the transcripts.
Ann concluded that the problems she had in articulating her own privilege
were because she did not “seek [it] out”. Selena found it difficult to
describe specific examples of privilege eventually conceding that “I can’t
think of a conscious time where I have realised that, right then in that
moment … I’ve been privileged because of my skin colour”. Neil, adamant
that he experienced white privilege, was only able to provide examples
that demonstrated class or male privilege. He, like a number of the
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participants, following our discussion acknowledged the unexpected
difficulties he encountered in attempting to articulate the realities of white
privilege.
An inability to identify the personal manifestations of privilege is
consistent with O’Brien’s (2001, 2007) research among white antiracists
in the United States. She termed this understanding of privilege at a macro
(institutional) level but not a micro (personal) level, selective race
cognizance. Participants in her research displaying selective race
cognizance were able to identify institutional racism and historical and
contemporary manifestations of white privilege in general, but were not
able to consider the ways in which they personally benefited from this
privilege. In her research, Frankenberg (1993, p. 169) also found
participants struggled to articulate the juncture of personal and structural
privilege, concluding that both a limited understanding of systems of
power and the means to express this, hampered their ability to engage
with the structure of race in their own lives.
An inability to articulate the relationship between racism, power and
themselves as individual white people was evident throughout many of
the interviews. Despite my efforts to personalise the discussion by asking
the participants directly how being either white or Pakeha had
contributed to making their own lives easier, the replies were often
constructed in general terms with the personal impact that privilege
played in each individual’s life receiving only cursory attention, if any at
all. This is illustrated in the examples above; Joy ignored the personalising
aspect of my question, Kurt answered my question by referring to our
shared educational attainment but instead of continuing to develop this
argument, he moved to a discussion of Maori disadvantage, Mike, Selena,
Ann and Neil were unable to distinguish the ways in which white privilege
84
operates in their lives and Mark seemed reluctant to consider himself
privileged. The effect of this selective race cognizance, like that of the
discourse of racism, was to obscure the existence of privilege in the lives of
the respondents.
Separation from other white people. The third strategy employed by
participants to disengage from personal privilege was the construction of
distance between themselves, and those who were seen to have privilege,
by implication other white people. This distance adds to the existing
theme of ‘separation from other white people’ that ran throughout the
data and will be discussed in the next chapter. The strategy at times
overlapped with the previously discussed strategy whereby participants
argued that white privilege existed at a macro but not a micro level. In the
excerpt above for example, Mike argues for the existence of white privilege
but, at the same time, that he himself is not privileged. For this to be
possible it implies a conviction that he is somehow disconnected from
other white people who do have access to privilege.
The strategy was also very evident in the talk of participants who
deliberately introduced different forms of privilege into the discussion.
When I asked Mike, an immigrant to New Zealand, how white privilege
manifested itself in his home country he noted his ability to access
University. He was quick to mitigate this however by arguing that the
class system in his country, excluded him from admission into more elite
Universities. An emphasis on class or socioeconomic status was also
evident in the talk of other participants.
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Suze: [I] don’t want to reinforce that just because I’m Pakeha I have more opportunities you know … class comes into it as well
Chris: I don't believe that you can be defined as being privileged simply because you are Pakeha. There are a large number of Pakeha who are not privileged, due to economic and educational constraints.
A number of the women I interviewed qualified their positions of privilege
by emphasising the gender discrimination they experienced. Elinor, for
example, argued that she had neither gender nor class privilege and so
could only concede that she was “relatively privileged”. What is
particularly significant about this, and further comments from participants
arguing that white people experience privilege in different ways, was the
timing - in direct response to a question that I had asked regarding
personal privilege. The utilisation of this strategy, and the construction of
self as separate from other differentially privileged white people, allowed
participants to divert attention away from the personal privilege that they
themselves enjoyed.
My intention here is not to detract from the experiences of those whose
lives are shaped by gender or class oppression. New Zealand women, as a
group for example, do shoulder more of the responsibility for unpaid
household work and childminding and have a significantly lower median
income than New Zealand men (Statistics New Zealand, 2005). White New
Zealand women, however, have a higher median income than women of
other ethnicities in this country. In New Zealand, single white mothers
reliant on the Domestic Purposes Benefit confront social and financial
barriers not experienced by parents with access to other sources of
wealth. Yet this group is less likely than Maori women in the same
circumstances to experience the repeat discrimination which has been
associated with poorer overall physical health (R. Harris et al., 2006). The
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degree to which white people can access privilege will of course be
influenced by individual conditions: at the same time however I wish to
emphasise that for all the injustice they experience, white people in this
country can never be oppressed as white people (Johnson, 2008).
Reflexive race cognizance. Disengagement from privilege was the
predominant theme to emerge from the data. This is not to say that it was
the only one present. A number of participants actively challenged white
privilege demonstrating what O’Brien (2001, 2007) has called reflexive
race cognizance whereby there is an understanding of both institutional
and individual privileges. Eve very clearly outlined the privileges she and
her children had experienced.
Eve: I wasn’t even questioned when I came to New Zealand to become a resident ... it was just accepted. ... I think it would have been quite different if I ...[had] come from a ...country with a different skin colour and religious background
... and ... that privilege has then ... extended to my children who have ... the same skin colour and therefore have never had any problems with being accepted by any schools ... or any clubs or ... activities that they wanted to join.
She along with other participants, who, for example, deliberately sent their
children to culturally diverse schools, demonstrated how it is possible to
“interrupt white privilege in her life” (O'Brien, 2007, p. 431).
This interruption of privilege was not however a dominant theme in the
data. More prevalent was the utilisation of one or more of the three
strategies outlined in this chapter, enabling participants to disengage from
white privilege, despite their avowal of the importance of acknowledging
it. Johnson (2008 p. 118 emphasis in original) wrote of the paradox that
many white people face through “being privileged” but not “feeling
privileged”. This contradiction was evident throughout the transcripts
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where privilege appeared to be defined as something bestowed upon
individuals rather than gained through belonging to a particular social
group. As highlighted in Chapter Two there is a significant body of
international literature outlining the benefits accruing to white people as a
group; benefits which are entrenched in the institutions of many Western
societies. In the second part of this chapter, I endeavour to highlight how
this institutional privilege may operate in New Zealand, in order to
emphasise the ways in which privilege is made available to white people in
this country.
Institutional Privilege
All of the participants I interviewed had some knowledge of the
disadvantage that Maori, as a group, face in everyday life. A number
mentioned socioeconomic indicators, health, education and the justice
system as areas where Maori experiences were dominated by institutional
racism. In this they are supported by social statistics which demonstrate
that Maori have an average net worth one third that of white New
Zealanders, are less likely to own their own homes, are over represented
in the prison system and as a group, have poorer outcomes in relation to
health and education (Department of Corrections, 2007; Ministry of
Education, 2011a; Ministry of Health, 2011a, 2011b; Statistics New
Zealand, 2002, 2007).
Yet while the majority of the participants decried the effects of racism,
what many failed to engage with was the fact that institutions
discriminating against Maori, do so by privileging white people (Consedine
& Consedine, 2005). A society that disadvantages one group achieves this
by providing greater opportunities to members of another. In this section
I look at how these privileges might manifest themselves in New Zealand
by considering the significant disparities that exist between white New
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Zealanders and Maori in four areas: education, housing, health and justice.
My intention in doing so is to provide an alternative script to the discourse
of racism that particularly dominated the talk of the participants.
Education. Quality education is inextricably linked with the goods and
services that a person can access yet statistics show that the New Zealand
education system is predominantly catering to the needs of white New
Zealanders as a group. Milne (2009, p. 21) has argued that there is a
“hidden, unacknowledged nature of whiteness and power” dominating
New Zealand schools. Inequalities between Maori and non Maori are
reinforced by a perspective which fails to acknowledge the validity of a
Maori point of view, text books that position mainstream white culture
and values as the norm and teachers who are unwilling or unaware of the
need to challenge classroom power dynamics (Milne, 2009; Smith, 1999).
As a result, in 2008 75.2% of white New Zealand school leavers had gained
NCEA level 2 or above, compared to only 50.5% of Maori school leavers.
While figures show the gaps between the two groups have been closing in
recent years, white New Zealanders are far more likely than non white to
complete a secondary school education and achieve comparatively higher
qualifications in doing so (Ministry of Education, 2011a; Ministry of Social
Development, 2010).
The level of education a person attains in New Zealand is directly
proportional to the likelihood that they will obtain employment. In
tertiary education, rates of white New Zealanders entering and completing
degree level courses and above are significantly higher than those of Maori
(Ministry of Education, 2011a). Data from the Ministry of Education
moreover, shows the median annual income for students five years after
completion of their study was highest for those who had completed post-
graduate degrees (Ministry of Education, 2011). White New Zealanders
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are far more likely to achieve these post-graduate qualifications that have
a particular significance in light of potential future earnings.
Homeownership. Like education, the connection between the generation of
wealth and homeownership in New Zealand is also well established with
the ownership of property providing a significant source of economic
security through a combination of mortgage repayments and capital gains
(Duncan, 2004; Perkins & Thorns, 2001). Current rates of home
ownership are 70.5% for white New Zealanders compared to only 42.5%
for Maori (DTZ New Zealand, 2007). This disparity, offering members of
the dominant white majority considerable economic advantage, is the
result of several factors including past housing policy which privileged
white people, and discrimination from real estate agents and lending
institutions (Waldegrave, 2006).
Family money amassed through property gains in this country has enabled
the accumulation and transfer of wealth across generations of white New
Zealanders. It has facilitated the sustained purchase of property in areas
which offer both high capital gains and the guarantee that children will
have access to quality education (Feagin, 1999). The advantages of
homeownership cannot be overstated. It has been identified as a
significant contributor to the average net worth of New Zealanders
(Statistics New Zealand, 2002), an amount proposed to be the most
important determinant of privilege in that it is almost entirely dependent
upon previous opportunities for the accrual of assets (Lipsitz, 2008). In
New Zealand however, Maori are over-represented amongst those
individuals with negative net worth and the average net worth of white
New Zealanders is three times that of Maori (Statistics New Zealand, 2002,
2007).
90
Health. The third area in which there are significant disparities between
white and non white is health. Life expectancy for a white New Zealand
woman is 83 years compared to 75.1 years for a Maori woman. For men
the gap between Maori and non Maori is nine years (Statistics New
Zealand, 2009). Recent health statistics indicate that rates of avoidable
mortality – that is death that may have been preventable had an individual
had access to medical interventions - are more than two and a half times
higher for Maori than for non Maori (Ministry of Health, 2010a). White
women, for example, are significantly less likely to present with lung,
breast or cervical cancer, however if they do, they are more likely to
survive these diseases (Ministry of Health, 2010b). While they are also far
more likely to be involved in screening programmes for both breast and
cervical cancer (Brewer et al 2010; Thomson, 2009) participation in these
programmes does not fully explain the differences in survival rates
suggesting the possibility of differential access to treatment between
ethnicities (Brewer, et al., 2010).
Research has also suggested a discrepancy in the treatment different
ethnicities receive within New Zealand hospitals. Studies of Ischaemic
heart disease, the leading cause of death for both Maori and non Maori in
New Zealand, has revealed the mortality rate for Maori is almost twice that
of non Maori (Ministry of Health, 2011b, 2011c). Based on rates of
mortality and hospitalisation, it has been concluded that access to surgical
interventions for this disease varies on the basis of ethnicity, that is, white
New Zealanders are more likely to be presented with the option for life
saving surgery (Curtis et. al, as cited in Reid & Cram, 2005)
The justice system. White people in New Zealand, it appears, are also far less
likely to be arrested or convicted of a crime and if they are, considerably
less likely to receive a custodial sentence. While comprising only 14% of
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the population, over 50% of all inmates in New Zealand’s prisons and 60%
of women prisoners are Maori (Department of Corrections, 2007). A
Department of Corrections (2007) report concluded that in comparative
terms; Maori were more likely to be arrested irrespective of actual wrong
doing, that following apprehension Maori were more likely to be
prosecuted, and having been convicted they were more likely to receive
prison sentences.
Further research supports this claim with evidence of police partiality
towards white New Zealanders, based on police self reporting and on
Maori self-reporting of their interactions with police (Maxwell, 2005). A
current longitudinal study lends weight to this claim demonstrating a
disparity in the police treatment of white and non white individuals.
Young white people in the study, for example, were significantly less likely
to be arrested and convicted for offences involving cannabis than Maori in
the same age group, with the same criminal history and rates of self
reported cannabis use (Fergusson, Horwood, & Swain-Campbell, 2003).
The authors’ conclusion that prejudice exists throughout the legal process,
indicates privilege for white people from the way the police manage initial
offences through to the workings of the New Zealand legal system. An
analysis of diversion in relation to both the police and court sentencing
suggests that there are not sufficient constraints in place to prevent the
continuation of such bias (Latu & Lucas, 2008).
These areas are by no means the only ones in which white New Zealanders
experience privilege. I have chosen to highlight these however in order to
demonstrate the futility of the argument implicit in the talk of many of the
participants, that it is possible for white people to separate themselves
from privilege. White children are in a position to benefit from an
education system set up to cater almost exclusively to their needs.
Statistically those in the dominant majority have a higher socioeconomic
status than those who do not have white skin and this is maintained
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through access to education and homeownership. Accumulated capital
has proved crucial in terms of the opportunities many white families have
been able to access and to provide to their children, opportunities that
work to maintain the persistence of privilege. White people continue to
benefit from a health system designed to cater to our needs, which is
succeeding in keeping us alive for longer and a justice system which by
implication suggests we are less likely to commit a crime and more likely
to be rehabilitated if we do. These are not benefits that we can take or
leave, it does not matter if we do not “seek [them] out”, as one participant
claimed, instead they are a fact of New Zealand life.
Conclusion
Wildman and Davis’ (2008) argument that we do not have the language to
talk about privilege is supported in this chapter. While talk of institutional
racism dominated the interviews, its corollary - that the participants as
white New Zealanders inevitably benefited from this - for the most part
remained unacknowledged. Recognising the concepts of racism and
privilege at a macro level is fundamental to any discussion of privilege but
in order to contest the power created and sustained by racism, it is also
important to acknowledge the specific ways that white people, as
individuals benefit. A tendency by many of the participants to discursively
avoid the material realities of privilege and its manifestations within their
own lives however, revealed a lack of engagement with the subject. In the
previous chapter I concluded that participants were unable to recognise
the symbolic capital that whiteness provides. This chapter demonstrates
that the privileges bestowed by this capital similarly went
unacknowledged. I propose that this is not because the participants were
unaware of the existence of privilege but because a separation from the
manifestations of whiteness made it difficult to engage with the
93
advantages that it has to offer. It is to this concept of separation that I turn
in the next chapter.
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Chapter 7
Separation from Other White People
In this chapter I examine separation, the fourth, and most dominant,
theme apparent in the data. In the first section I expand on this theme as it
appeared in previous chapters. In particular I look at the strategies used
by the participants in order to effect this separation and to emphasise
difference from other white people. My intention in this thesis however is
to argue that consideration needs to shift to the advantages shared by
members of the dominant majority rather than focusing on the differences
between us. Part two of the chapter therefore seeks to emphasise what
has been described as a “hegemonic whiteness” that transcends these
perceived distinctions (Hughey, 2010; Lewis, 2004). While not attempting
to deny the differences that exist between white people, by highlighting
this hegemony, I wish to emphasise the group cohesion created by
whiteness; specifically the benefits shared by living in a society structured
along racial lines. This chapter presents the final part of the thesis
proposing that the concept of separation, a seemingly integral part of a
Pakeha identity, can work to obfuscate understandings of whiteness and
privilege.
Separation via a Pakeha Identity
In Chapter Four, I proposed that in the process of emphasising a
connection with Maori, many participants distanced themselves from
other white people. The rejection of a European identity was identified as
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a rhetorical device employed by the majority of the participants to
separate themselves from those in the dominant majority who do choose
to identify in this way. Similarly, the adoption of a Pakeha identity was
also interpreted as a means of effecting this separation.
Marcie I would choose to be Pakeha because of a better understanding of indigenous issues in New Zealand.
Rae: [The label Pakeha] … indicates a little bit more thoughtfulness or intelligence possibly.
Kurt: It’s [identifying as Pakeha] an intellectual journey.
Dan No other term [than Pakeha]… works I guess for me… Not like New Zealand European … I think it [identifying as European] feels really old school to me like … people in my parent’s generation still … talk about England as home ... I react against that a bit, I don’t like that term.
Selena: The wool shed and the shearing and the black singlets and the … afternoon teas and ladies a plate and all of that kinda thing … that’s very much a New Zealand Pakeha, no sorry not Pakeha, New Zealand European, white New Zealand thing.
Marcie has chosen to be identified as Pakeha because of a “better
understanding”, presumably than other white people, of matters
concerning Maori. For her, as for Rae and Kurt, the identity is used to
highlight a degree of consciousness not shared by those who reject a
Pakeha identity. Dan and Selena define a European identity as
representative of a traditional white New Zealand identity. In their talk
they portrayed the label as having particularly conservative implications
that are negated through the adoption of the more contemporary Pakeha
identity. Similarly Eve described living in what she termed “white
country” and emphasised the differences between her own Pakeha family
and other white families who lived in the area who were “very white [and]
very conservative”. Selena extended on this, describing a European
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culture which positioned Maori as outsiders, a positioning she did not see
existing in “contemporary Pakeha” culture.
A political separation. Several of those interviewed expressed surprise that
friends or colleagues they had spoken to after receiving my invitation to
participate in the interviews, and who they assumed would share their
Pakeha identity, did not. The assumption was based on the fact that these
people shared, in the words of one of the participants, “similar views ...and
attitudes to all sorts of cultural issues”. A number of participants
explained such attitudes as a specific political divergence from other white
people. During the interview with Elinor, she proposed that those who did
not identify as Pakeha would have very different beliefs in relation to
Maori and the Treaty of Waitangi, a position echoed by a number of other
participants. For Suze, a Pakeha identity allowed her to express her
political views and forge connections with other Pakeha, whom she
assumed would similarly share her beliefs.
The assumption that those who identify as New Zealand European
subscribe to a political position that is unsupportive of Maori self
determination was apparent in the comments of a number of participants
as they explained why they had rejected the label in favour of the term
Pakeha.
Mark: They [family members] would quite readily use phrases or language to the extent that they’re fed up with all this Maori Treaty nonsense, let’s just move on … Along [with] that would be a resistance to… this category Pakeha because it’s obviously a Maori category. … I guess they’d … be more comfortable with European.
Mike A lot of people’s reactions [are] “NO I’m a … European I’m a New Zealander” and I refuse to be labelled by
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something that is a MAORI word … it’s really reactive and it’s particularly divisive as well.
New Zealand European is the most commonly assumed ethnic identity for
members of the white majority in this country. For this reason it was the
identity that was most often singled out by the participants as they
constructed an argument defending their choice to identify as Pakeha.
Other options, such as Caucasian and New Zealander, were also referred to
and similarly dismissed.
Caucasian, a term commonly used by the New Zealand media in crime
reporting, was felt by the majority of the participants to lack any relevance
in relation to their own identities. While the term New Zealander was
used by most to identify their nationality, a number spoke disparagingly of
those white New Zealanders who eschewed ethnic identifiers and adopted
the term to represent their ethnicity.
Ann: One of my brothers would ... call himself Pakeha ... The other one, I don’t think he would even think about it. I don’t know what he’d call himself. New Zealander probably if he had to think about it and he doesn’t generally ... he’s a lovely chap but ... his world view is incredibly narrow.
Rae: I had a discussion with my mother in-law who said “we should be all just New Zealanders. We should be all just one”... and I ... [said] “which one? which one? Just your culture is that what you’re wanting? ...and ... that shut her up really ... she doesn’t think past that.
For Ann and Rae, those who choose to identify as New Zealanders in this
context, were depicted as being narrow minded and unwilling to consider
another point of view; a depiction evidenced in part, by their decision to
identify in this way.
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As I reflected upon my involvement in the interviews, I began to realise
how my own comments similarly demonstrated this assumption.
Claire: That would be the first question why do you choose to identify as Pakeha as opposed to
Suze: A Kiwi? Or a New Zealander?
Claire: JUST a New Zealander ((Laughter))
Suze Just a New Zealander
Eve I’m ... connected with a New Zealand family ... and … with them I have ...fun ...using one [Pakeha] or the other term [Tangata Tiriti] ((Laughter)) because they see themselves as neither
Claire: Yeah right are they JUST New Zealanders?
Eve: Yes ((Laughter))
My emphasis on the word “just” and the subsequent laughter indicates the
disparaging way both I, and the interviewee, perceived this conflation of
ethnic and national identity. Those who identify as “just a New Zealander”
were categorised as politically separate from Pakeha and the implication
was this preference is erroneous within the context of racism. This
supposition is supported by whiteness literature critical of those in the
dominant majority who ignore their own ethnicity, seeing themselves
instead as representative of a universal norm (Dei, et al., 2004; Dyer, 1997;
Frankenberg, 1993; Gibson, 2006; Sue, 2004a, 2004b). Its presence
further reinforces the discourse of separation prevalent throughout the
data although it is unclear whether my employment of this discursive
practice actually encouraged its use during the interviews. A more likely
interpretation, I believe, is that the ease with which this discourse was
utilised demonstrates its perceived appropriateness within the context of
a discussion of racism.
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The Prejudice Problematic
Following interviews with white antiracists in the United States, Hughey
(2010) highlighted a reliance upon a narrative emphasising the diversity
of white identities and the relevance this was perceived to have in relation
to racism. Many of those he interviewed readily categorised individual
white people on the basis of their varying political positions: “neo-
conservatives and progressives, moralists and relativists, racists and
antiracists”, aligning themselves with certain factions in order to affirm
their non racist positioning (Hughey, 2009, p. 929). Politically separating
racist and non racist - the bad and the good - tends to ease discussions of
racism amongst white people by providing them with a distancing
mechanism from racism (Hughey, 2009). This strategy, as Bonnett (2000a,
p. 10) also pointed out, allows white people to readily identify the “heroes
and villains” in racism without implicating themselves.
An emphasis on the failings of another group of people is a key feature of a
strategy described by Wetherill and Potter (1992, p. 201) as “the prejudice
problematic”. In analysing what they termed “the language of racism”,
they identified the strategy, commonly utilised in debates of racism by
members of the dominant white majority in New Zealand, of contrasting
oneself with other, purportedly less progressive, individuals. Its effect,
they argued, was the construction of a non racist, benevolent identity
reliant upon deriding the opinions of others in order to demonstrate the
superiority of one’s own. Within my own data, the use of what Wetherell
and Potter (1992, p. 154) termed “extreme case formations” further
worked to highlight this dualistic positioning. A number of participants
shared stories of particularly confrontational experiences with other white
people, emphasising their own non racist attitudes.
Kurt: There are aspects of Australian culture that I’ve ... found really alienating ... I visited a girlfriend in Brisbane and there
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were a pair of pistols crossed on the wall with quite long barrels and they were used to hunt Aboriginals … so it was a reality check … what are the beliefs going on here?
Ann: When I was over in England in the mid 80s there were big race ... [demonstrations] going on in the East End and quite a few of us went from our school to stand against the skin head protest that was going down the street. They were awful, awful, awful, awful people and ... it makes me feel ashamed of being white if people are that hateful.
Rae: I’m not afraid to look at difference and accept other people ...I was ...at the pub the other night with someone ... he said “ya know if someone’s got a full moko on their face ... they are looking for a fight”... he was being an antagonist and he was trying to get me to have this discussion ...and I thought to myself ... how am I responding to this racist stupid comment? And I guess that I have such an understanding that this is such racism and such stupidity and such ignorance that I’m going to come across people like that and it’s not [for] me to judge them for being in that position.
Such statements served to emphasise the tolerant stance of the speaker
through highlighting their reactions to the extreme behaviours of other
white people. Kurt related visiting with people who in his words
“celebrat[ed] killing” non whites and contrasted this with his reflective,
non judgemental act of trying to understand their “beliefs.” Ann described
how she went to “stand against” racist white skinheads in London’s East
End. Her action - standing - is not one of violence but of quiet, dignified
protest. Rae describes an encounter where she resisted the provocation to
argue about an aspect of Maori culture. The effect of all three examples is
the same; the irrational stance of others in relation to racism accentuates
the speakers own contrasting attitudes and behaviours. Positioning
another’s attitudes as unreasonable served to increase the persuasiveness
of the argument that the speaker’s own views are reasonable and by
inference, more appropriate.
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What is significant about the appearance of the prejudice problematic
within the transcripts is that it is also demonstrated in Wetherell and
Potter’s (1992) work with members of the mainstream white majority
whose attitudes concerning race appear to align less with those of the
participants I interviewed and more alongside those of the white people
they were distancing themselves from. In contrast to the majority of those
participating in my own research, for example, many of the participants in
Wetherell and Potter’s (1992) study demonstrated a belief in biological
determinism and an adherence to an anti-Maori discourse. Both groups
however, used the same discursive strategy - dependent upon being able
to group others on the basis of their perceived prejudice or tolerance - of
locating prejudice in others. Yet as Wetherell and Potter asked (1992, p.
215) “when all of us become skilled at exploiting the prejudice
problematic, who is to say just which of us are the tolerant sheep and
which the prejudiced goats?”
The “tolerant sheep” in the data emerged as Pakeha and the identity itself
became a convenient means of signalling this. Earlier in this chapter I
observed that a range of positive characteristics were associated with
being Pakeha. In addition to indicating a contemporary positioning, the
identity was taken to suggest a certain degree of knowledge and moreover,
the intellectual capacity to absorb such knowledge. Kurt gave the example
of a colleague who identified as New Zealand European but whom he
believed would eventually come to accept a Pakeha identity “if he thinks
through these issues enough”. The issues were defined as those relating to
Maori and their culture. Elinor argued that the more she heard white
people express opinions in relation to Maori that she felt were “unhelpful
and wrong”, the more she wished to be identified as Pakeha. Mike
portrayed himself as “open minded” in comparison to the “reactive and
...particularly divisive” white people who do not want to be labelled as
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Pakeha. The suggestion from all of these participants is that to be a
Pakeha is a very good thing to be.
The Heterogeneity of Whiteness?
In his work with white antiracists, Hughey (2009, 2010) argued that a
narrative of separation can work against the conceptualisation of white
people as a group thereby limiting interpretations of white privilege.
Conceptualising white identity as heterogeneous however is encouraged
in a significant portion of the literature relevant to this thesis.
Frankenberg (1993) and O’Brien (2001, 2007) for example, categorised
white people on the basis of their cognizance of race and racial attitudes.
For Frankenberg (1993), race cognizant individuals were defined as being
outside of the mainstream in terms of their political positioning and
attitudes to social justice. Likewise O’Brien (2001, 2007) contrasted
selective race cognizant individuals with those who demonstrate reflexive
race cognizance, offering detailed examples of the types of activities and
personal reflection that those belonging to both groups might engage in,
and the ideologies they may subscribe to. While such literature in no way
advocates the division of white people into good and bad - indeed O’Brien
(2003) specifically rejected such a dichotomy – it can be argued that its
focus on difference and categorisation can potentially encourage such
separation.
A narrative of separation was also very apparent in the literature cited in
Chapter Two surrounding the formation of a Pakeha identity. King (1991),
for example, distinguished between those white New Zealanders whose
identity is aligned with Europe and Pakeha who perceive themselves to be
rooted in this country. Similarly, Spoonley (1995a, p. 54) suggested that a
Pakeha identity presents the opportunity for “alternative
conceptualisations of dominant group identity”. More recently, a number
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of Pakeha writers on the topic have unproblematically argued for the
heterogeneity of white New Zealand identities, in order to reaffirm a
Pakeha identity that is sympathetic to Maori concerns (Hepi, 2008;
McCreanor, 2005; Mitcalfe, 2008). McCreanor (2005) has emphatically
stated:
“I acknowledge my own position within the empowered group and
follow early anti-racism workers in Aotearoa positioning myself as
Pakeha to signal difference from other European settlers who
ignore or deny the status of Maori as tangata whenua. My usage is
intended to signal critique of the established power relations”. ( p.
53)
As Bell (1996, p. 146) has noted, choice of identity can be seen to
represent not merely a personal preference but a “discursive struggle” to
assert oneself politically in relation to other groups. Indeed, the main
emphasis in McCreanor’s (2005) statement above, is his political
opposition to other groups of white people in this country. Such a
positioning however, while signalling critique, arguably does little to
actually challenge the “power relations” referred to in this statement.
Locating the site for change firmly within an individual through targeting
his or her attitudes and beliefs, detaches racism from the structural
inequalities that exist between white and non white, potentially
overwhelming issues of power (M. Anderson, 2003).
Lawn (1994) was one of the first writers to identify the potential pitfalls of
embracing a Pakeha identity without engaging with the existing structural
inequities defining New Zealand society. An emphasis on a Pakeha
identity, she argued, runs the risk of overwhelming the issue of racism by
creating an illusion of Maori/Pakeha equality. Maintaining a sense of
belonging to New Zealand and a willingness to acknowledge Maori
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political interests, as those who advocated the adoption of a Pakeha
identity had done, had not subjected them to the social inequity
experienced by Maori as a group. Directly critiquing King (1991) she
asserted that his goals for Pakeha are independent of Maori interests:
Pakeha “centeredness” and “identity”, for example, may serve
predominantly to protect the interests of the dominant white majority. In
order to achieve the reality of the “equal dialogue” that King (1991)
promoted, she proposed, Pakeha, as white New Zealanders, first need to
appreciate “their economic and psychological investment in inequality”
(Lawn, 1994, p. 303).
Throughout this research project, and in particular in Chapter Six, I have
noted the difficulties that participants appeared to have in reconciling
their affiliation with institutional and structural privilege. While there was
an overwhelming acknowledgement during the interviews, of the
existence of privilege and that indeed it must have shaped their lives in
some way, many participants openly struggled to share specific examples
of the privileges they received from New Zealand’s institutions.
One explanation for this, I propose, may be found in the notion of
individualism long associated with Western culture, in which society is
perceived to be made up of autonomous, self sufficient individuals
(Laungani, 2007; Lipsitz, 1998). The concepts of independence, self-
reliance, autonomy and responsibility for one’s actions are all intrinsic to
this ideal. As self-autonomous individuals, we can draw sharp boundaries
between others and ourselves within the context of racism, abstracting
ourselves from situations where we might otherwise be implicated
(Sampson, 2000). We alone bear the moral responsibility for our actions
and subsequently we cannot be held accountable for the actions of others.
Within the context of privilege however, believing ourselves to be
autonomous can obscure the ways in which we may benefit – albeit
unintentionally - from society’s institutions. A dependence on the
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philosophy of individualism and an adherence to the notion of individual
rights can prevent us from understanding the collective reality of our
experiences.
Whiteness as Social Collectivism
As discussed during in Chapter Two, a number of New Zealand writers
have attempted to draw attention to the white majority as a social
collective (Awatere, 1984; Colvin, 2009; Consedine & Consedine, 2005;
Dyson, 1996; Lawn, 1994). Dyson (1996) focused on the origins of
whiteness in New Zealand arguing that by the end of the nineteenth
century the white majority, made up as it was by individuals from a range
of different European nations, saw itself ultimately as one homogenous
group. This homogeneity was officially endorsed, she argued, within the
1901 census when all white people were included in the category
“population”. The population however, specifically excluded those “of the
aboriginal native race, of mixed European and native blood and Chinese)”
(as cited in: Dyson, 1996, p. 61). While colonisation in New Zealand,
initially manifested itself in the attempted reproduction of a white British
culture affording those who claimed British identity significant privileges,
by the beginning of the twentieth century it seems, whiteness alone was
enough to guarantee these privileges (Cohen, 1997).
Lawn (1994) similarly engaged with whiteness in a New Zealand context,
arguing, in response to the growing popularity of a Pakeha identity, that
identifying as Pakeha potentially provided a discursive means of
sidestepping the negative connotations that had come to be associated
with whiteness in Western society in the 1980s and 1990s. In
contemporary New Zealand society, as at the beginning of the twentieth
century, it is whiteness that provides the assurance of privilege. It is the
linking of whiteness with privilege therefore that provides a justification
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for analysis of whiteness as social collectivism, a collectivism I propose
that is potentially overwhelmed by the separation inherent in a Pakeha
identity. As Lewis (2004, p. 624) has argued “[w]hether all whites have
self-conscious racial identities may or may not matter as much for their
life chances as external readings of them as white”.
In shifting focus and assessing white people as a group, the problem arises
as to how to avoid essentialising whiteness and suggesting that white
people experience it in identical ways. Notions of essentialism which have
dominated many discussions of race, gender and culture in the past have
been challenged for their assumption of shared fundamental group
characteristics (Ashcroft 2007). The concept has also been defended for
its value as a tool of resistance for many minority groups. In response to
this debate, Spivak (as cited in Ashcroft, et al., 2007, p. 74) introduced the
notion of “strategic essentialism”, noting not only the value of essentialism
but also its political inevitability, arguing that while it may be preferable to
avoid “discourses of essentialism…strategically we cannot”.
While, Spivak’s argument was directed towards colonised people and the
means by which they may celebrate their traditional cultures, in
discussions of racism and privilege, the concept of “strategic essentialism”
appears valuable in redirecting discussions of whiteness away from the
notion of heterogeneous white identities and towards white hegemony.
Ironically appropriating Spivak’s argument on behalf of the dominant
majority allows us to consider whiteness strategically within this context,
and study what is shared by white people without implying that their
experiences of whiteness are inevitably replicated.
A number of international writers have developed this notion of
collectivism to demonstrate how white identities are both created by, and
contribute to, social dominance. Hughey (2009, 2010), for example,
compared two politically opposed organisations - white nationalists and
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white antiracists - in order to challenge the assumed division between
these two groups in relation to racial identity. By analysing their
similarities and differences, he demonstrates the shared means by which
white people may make sense of their whiteness through identifying the
replication of notions of white supremacy within these two seemingly
antithetical organisations.
Within an Australian context, Hage (1998) suggested that white racists
and white multiculturalists also may share more assumptions than either
group suspected. He maintained that white Australians are preoccupied
with the fantasy of a “[w]hite nation” locating them at the nation’s centre,
while positioning aborigines and non whites as objects on the periphery,
but within a white “sphere of influence” (Hage, 1998, p. 89). Through
linking the concepts of tolerance and power within the context of white
Australian culture, he argued that the call for tolerance by multiculturalists
merely hides and reinscribes the power to tolerate. It is only white
Australians - racist or multiculturalist - who are able to proclaim tolerance
of non white others: that aborigines or immigrants should ever announce
that they are tolerant of white Australians is “clearly ridiculous” (Hage,
1998, p. 88). For both Hughey (2009, 2010) and Hage (1998), a
willingness to embrace inclusiveness not only does not move whiteness
from the centre, but can obscure the power inherent in the occupation of a
cultural space defined as normal.
White Culture and Power. Indeed for both of these authors it is this concept
of cultural space that links seemingly politically disparate groups of white
people and allows whiteness and white people to be conceived of
collectively. The notion of culture was previously examined in Chapter
Five. In that chapter, I proposed that whiteness provided a form of
cultural capital and argued that, to varying degrees, all white people in
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New Zealand were able to access this capital and consequently resources,
power and privilege. The chapter concluded however, that because many
of the participants I interviewed had reified whiteness to the extent that it
had little meaning for them personally, they were unable to recognise both
their own whiteness and the extent to which they benefited from it.
An emphasis on white culture in this thesis is intended to highlight the
impossibility of separating whiteness from white people. An attempt to do
just that however was implicit throughout the interview data. When I
asked Suze if she ever used the word white to describe herself she replied:
Suze I might talk about white privilege ...yeah definitely white privilege or white supremacy ...not in terms of MYSELF not white supremacist. I mean I talk about it in relation to GROUPS to ... show how I feel about them. ... In terms of ... the Government is a white supremacist government.
Suze’s obvious discomfort in associating herself with whiteness was
replicated throughout the data. Marcie argued that the word sounded
“discriminatory” and Elinor stated that white “doesn’t mean anything in
terms of what I’m trying to say about myself”. Neil on the other hand
proposed that despite the negative associations that accrued to the word
he did not “want to let go of it”. Similarly Mike suggested that while happy
with both labels - Pakeha and white - he could “take them on take them
off” if they were used by others in derogatory ways. Notwithstanding the
opposing stances expressed by these participants in terms of their
proclaimed willingness to identify with whiteness, implicit in the language
of all of these examples is the notion that one can choose to either reject or
accept whiteness.
That a white identity is seen as just one of several alternatives suggests
that whiteness is perceived as a matter of individual choice. The idea that
white people can somehow separate themselves from whiteness seems
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unsustainable in light of the evidence presented within this thesis which
demonstrates the tangible benefits associated with being white in New
Zealand. Such an attitude ignores the relationship between white culture
and power reinforcing the untenable position that white people can just
decide not to be white and the material advantages associated with
whiteness may somehow disappear.
Conclusion
Within this chapter I looked at the most dominant theme to emerge from
the data – that of separation. Analysis demonstrated how discourse was
used by participants to effect a separation from other groups of white New
Zealanders, both personally and politically. I identified a number of
rhetorical devices, repeated throughout the data, which served to
emphasise the heterogeneity of whiteness and white identity in New
Zealand. In the second part of the chapter however, I argue that the link
between whiteness, power and privilege necessitates a consideration of
whiteness as a form of social collectivism. This chapter reemphasises this
connection and the need to acknowledge the dominance of white culture
in contemporary New Zealand society.
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Chapter 8
Conclusion and Implications
Thesis Overview
The preoccupation of this project was to explore the suggestion that a
Pakeha identity precludes an engagement with whiteness and
subsequently obscures an appreciation of the way white privilege operates
within and shapes a person’s life. Adoption of the term Pakeha, by many
white New Zealanders, gained momentum in New Zealand in support of
the anticolonial sentiment voiced by a number of Maori during the 1970s
and 1980s. As demands for state recognition of the Treaty of Waitangi and
redressing of historical wrongs grew white New Zealanders, sympathetic
to such matters, sought to align themselves with Maori (King, 1991; Lawn,
1994; Spoonley, 1995a, 1995b). In claiming a Pakeha identity, it became
possible to express concern through separating oneself from those in the
white majority who were unsupportive of Maori interests.
In Chapter Two I presented a review of the literature. I identified the
themes of white privilege and the invisibility of whiteness which provided
the framework within which to answer the research question. Whiteness
has been described as an unseen asset which provides social and economic
advantages to white people and determines the experiences of both Maori
and non Maori in New Zealand (Awatere, 1984; Colvin, 2009; Dyson, 1996;
Gibson, 2006; Lawn, 1994). Literature pertaining to an analysis of a
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Pakeha identity and whiteness as both invisible and as a form of privilege
was therefore particularly relevant in contextualising an analysis of the
significance of whiteness to those New Zealanders who choose to identify
as Pakeha.
My study was shaped by several theoretical perspectives as outlined in
Chapter Three. The influence of critical whiteness theory is apparent
throughout as I locate my own research alongside that of writers on
whiteness and privilege. My analysis drew upon thematic analysis in
order to identify the four themes which made up chapters four to seven of
the thesis: a relationship with Maori, reification of whiteness,
disengagement from privilege and separation from other white people.
The study was also strongly influenced by discourse theory as I concerned
myself with the ways in which language was used by the participants in
this study to construct their explanation of identity, whiteness and
privilege. Understanding the meaning behind the language of the
participants and the social action of this language was a concern of mine
throughout the analysis.
In Chapter Four, I explored the discourse surrounding a Pakeha identity.
The analysis revealed a dependence upon several common ideologies; the
rejection of a connection to Europe and subsequent construction of a
Pakeha identity as representative of a relationship with both the land
originally occupied by Maori and with Maori as a people. The imagery of a
relationship with Maori emerged as a defining aspect of a Pakeha identity
for the participants. I contend however, that this relationship does not
exist in any tangible sense and is potentially problematic within the
context of whiteness literature maintaining that members of dominant
white majorities often rely upon the identities of non white in order to
define their own. My intention is not to discredit the meaning that
participants gave to their Pakeha identity but to encourage a critical
examination of the label in order to ascertain its effectiveness in
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representing a relationship with Maori. There are significant implications
for its continued use if, as this thesis suggests, that use may serve to
perpetuate white hegemony by ignoring the power differential that exists
between Maori and Pakeha in New Zealand society.
Having touched upon whiteness and the participants’ disengagement with
this aspect of a Pakeha identity in Chapter Four, the following chapter
further expanded upon this theme. In Chapter Five, I considered the
interpretation of whiteness by the research participants. The reification of
whiteness theme was developed as I looked at the discomfort which
emerged during the interviews as we discussed what being white meant to
the participants. Words such as “skin head”, “oppressor”, “supremacy” and
“domination” were used and it became clear that many of the participants
had reified whiteness to such an extent that it had no place in their own
formation of identity.
I argue that this is problematic for two reasons. Skin colour is a
fundamental way that people gain a sense of themselves and of others.
Not only do we differentiate people on the basis of skin colour, but in
Western societies there is an inherent value attached to this
differentiation. Whiteness is transformed into a form of cultural capital
which reinforces the centrality of a white subject position and rewards
white cultural knowledge. Such capital, however, frequently remains
unseen by members of the dominant white majority, serving to further
strengthen its power. I propose that a relationship exists between the
invisibility of whiteness and white cultural capital and argue that many of
the participants had become so accustomed to disassociating from
whiteness that they were unable to see how they benefited from a
proficiency in white culture. In the final section of Chapter Five, I argue
that because of the ambiguity of the term in relation to race, a Pakeha
identity potentially offers a means by which participants can separate
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themselves from both whiteness and New Zealand’s white majority
culture.
Chapters Five and Six together answer an important part of the research
question. These chapters illustrate that many of the participants did
indeed struggle to appreciate their own whiteness and the privileges that
accrue on account of it. The degree to which participants were
constrained by their understanding of whiteness, was illustrated in
Chapter Six where, despite acknowledging the social statistics
demonstrating privilege, few demonstrated an understanding of the extent
to which they personally enjoyed the benefits associated with whiteness in
New Zealand.
In that chapter, I highlighted three strategies utilised by participants in
order to create a perception of distance between themselves and privilege;
a discourse of racism, a disinclination for talk about personal privilege and
the rhetorical separation of self from other white people. These discursive
approaches ultimately worked to emphasise the privileged positions
occupied by other white people - positions seemingly unavailable to the
participants. Privilege was identified by a number of the women
participants as something enjoyed by men. Similarly, some of those with
working class roots, emphasised the relationship between socioeconomic
status and advantage. The ultimate effect of this was to reinforce a
separation from whiteness that made it difficult to engage with the
privileges that it can confer. In the final part of Chapter Six I explored the
intersection between personal and structural privilege, outlining the
privileges made available to white New Zealanders solely on account of
their whiteness.
The theme of separation, highlighted throughout my analysis, was key to
this thesis. Within Chapter Four, the notion of a Pakeha identity as
representative of a relationship with the land as originally occupied by
114
Maori and with Maori as a people emerged. I argue that emphasising this
relationship offers a discursive means by which Pakeha may separate
themselves from other white people who may not identify in this way. The
theme was also discussed in Chapter Six where I argued that a separation
of self from other white people was a device enabling participants to
disengage from personal privilege.
In the first part of Chapter Seven I extended on this theme, identifying a
number of rhetorical devices utilised in order to create a sense of
separation from other white people. The adoption of a Pakeha identity
and subsequent rejection of other ethnic identifiers, I proposed, helped
create a sense of detachment from other white New Zealanders. The
utilisation of the “prejudice problematic” further served to emphasise this
distance. Separating oneself from other white people by calling attention
to their failings may facilitate the construction of a non racist identity.
Positioning others as prejudiced can, by contrast, highlight one’s own non
racist attitude. The utilisation of this device, I argued, was particularly
significant in that it has been demonstrably used by white people across
the spectrum of racism. This suggests that in creating a sense of
separation, participants may have been drawing upon a standard
discourse shared by members of the dominant white majority in
discussions of racism.
In the second part of the chapter, I argued that the concept of separation
depends upon the notion of individualism. Societies in Western culture
are often perceived to be made up of autonomous self-sufficient
individuals; however, such a notion is constraining in relation to
discussions of privilege for what Lipsitz (1998, p. 20) has described as its
“inability to describe adequately the collective dimensions of our
experience”. A focus on individualism may instead divert attention away
from the ways in which white people across the political spectrum are
connected through shared culture and access to material resources.
115
In creating a sense of separation from other white people, I propose that
Pakeha risk diverting attention from the relationship that exists between
all white people in this country. Whiteness, I have argued, provides a form
of symbolic capital putting a range of inevitable privileges within the reach
of white people. A failure to acknowledge this potentially obscures the
relationship between whiteness, culture and power, and risks redefining
privilege as individual status rather than the structural inequities that are
embedded within the institutions of this country. Pakeha may be able to
recognise the consequences of colonisation for Maori, but an emphasis on
separation may preclude an engagement with how the legacy of
colonisation - contemporary structural inequality - serves to favour all
white New Zealanders.
My own Pakeha Identity
At the beginning of this thesis, I presented an account of the origin of my
interest in white privilege and decision to incorporate an analysis of the
Pakeha identity into the research question. My decision to explore a
Pakeha identity came from a personal investment in this topic. During the
course of my undergraduate degree I began identifying as Pakeha
overriding my earlier preference for New Zealand European. The change
came about as I encountered material surrounding the colonisation of New
Zealand and began to understand the extent of its effect on Maori. Elinor,
one of the participants in this study, told me “I would like to think that
people hear that I define myself as Pakeha and immediately know some
stuff about me”. Like her, I felt that the act of self identifying as Pakeha,
signalling as it does a readiness to engage with the Maori language,
presented a statement about me and my inclination to support Maori.
In Chapter Three, I identified my willingness to engage with the data in
order to recognise how my values and beliefs shaped the project. I wrote
116
in that chapter about my use of reflexivity to critique my research
practices and to engage with my reactions to the research process. Having
reached the end of that process an explanation of these reactions is
warranted. Giddens (1991) described reflexivity as a practice by which
people make change within their lives drawing on knowledge gained
through interaction with their environment. During my undergraduate
degree I felt the need to reconcile my identity as a non Maori New
Zealander with the new knowledge I had gained – knowledge about
institutional racism, colonisation, biculturalism and the Treaty of Waitangi.
Through drawing upon available narratives, in particular that of being “not
European”, and revising my “biographical narrative” (Giddens, 1991, p. 5),
I managed this process of reconciliation declaring that I was now “Pakeha”.
This process was undeniably an intellectual one as I attempted to
understand myself within the context of my social environment (Archer as
cited in Burkitt, 2012). Having assessed the historical evidence
surrounding colonisation and the implications of this for contemporary
Maori, I wanted to make a statement of support for Maori; being Pakeha
allowed me to do that. Yet it was not only a result of an intellectual
engagement with the material I was studying that pre-empted my
adoption of a Pakeha identity. I was also reassured by the feeling that to
identify as Pakeha was to make a positive statement. My emotional
response supports Burkitt’s (2012) assertion that the way we feel about
our relationship with the world and the people in it, is critical to reflexive
thought.
Emotional responses were critical drivers throughout the research
process. It came as a shock when I began to search for literature on white
privilege – my chosen thesis topic – to encounter Lawn’s (1994) critique of
the Pakeha identity. My emotional engagement with this criticism
ultimately led me to question the adequacy of the biographical narrative I
had created and to the research question which formed the basis of this
117
thesis. Lawn’s (1994) article was not supported with New Zealand based
research, nor was any forthcoming in the years following the publication
of her article. I was motivated therefore to explore her proposition that a
Pakeha identity may allow white New Zealanders to avoid engaging with
issues of structural racism and reconcile this with my own Pakeha identity.
In Chapter Three I outlined the feeling of being overwhelmed by my
position as an insider researcher. This feeling re-emerged at several
points in the research process. I wrote in Chapter Seven of the realisation
that I had actively used a discourse of separation during the interviews.
This realisation led me to question the effect this had on the quality of the
data. An assimilation of participants’ dominant discourses can lead to
collusion or at least leave the researcher open to accusations of such (van
Heugten, 2004). Again, as outlined in Chapter Three, I needed to
reposition myself in relation to the data in order to understand the
implications of this. This allowed me to realise that as a member of the
researched group, I will utilise the discourses of this group, and indeed it
would be remarkable if I did not. What was crucial was to relocate myself
as researcher in order to recognise the significance of these discourses for
the research project.
Engaging reflexively with the material in this way inevitably had a bearing
on my Pakeha identity. Analysis of the data allowed me to see how my
Pakeha identity influenced my use of discourse yet at the same time I was
critiquing this discourse throughout my writing. My use of reflexivity
involved rationalisation and a certain degree of “self-feeling” as I assessed
myself in relation to my environment and ultimately re-evaluated the
environment itself (Burkitt, 2012, p. 471). In other words my critique of
the social context within which a Pakeha identity is created caused me to
reassess its relevance for me personally.
118
I have reached the conclusion of this project still identifying as a Pakeha
New Zealander but acknowledging now that I am first and foremost a New
Zealand European. Utilising a word from the Maori language still seems an
appropriate way of conveying support for Maori. It is the European
identity however that affirms for me my ancestry and the role this has
played in assuring access to an array of institutional privileges. I am in no
way promoting this as the only conclusion that can be drawn from the
research. It is the result of my own personal engagement with the data
and subsequent decision concerning my representation of self.
Research Limitations
All research that focuses attention on the dominant white majority runs
the risk of diverting attention from the issues of racism and leaving white
hegemony unchallenged (Consedine & Consedine, 2005). By
contextualising my research within a discussion of white privilege, I hope
to have minimised this potential problem. Future research in this area
could further diminish the risk by directly incorporating the voices of
Maori people. I have cited the opinions of a number of Maori writers
throughout my writing, but the data collection did not include any direct
interviews with Maori. While aware of this limitation, constraints
naturally dictated by the scope and length of a Master’s thesis meant it was
not practical to do this.
A further limitation is apparent in my focus on the term Pakeha. In recent
years the term Tangata Tiriti – People of the Treaty - has emerged as an
alternative identity for white New Zealanders. Its adoption does not
appear to be widespread and only two of the participants in this study
advised that they regularly used the term to describe themselves. Analysis
of their comments did however, indicate the recurrence of several
discourses shared with a Pakeha identity; the belief that it represents a
119
political statement and an indication of support for Maori. More research
is indicated in this area in order to explore the implications of the adoption
of this identity, in particular in relation to whiteness and hegemony.
There were also limitations presented by the location of the research
project. Due to time and financial constraints the research was carried out
in Christchurch. The New Zealand European population of the Canterbury
region is 77.4% compared with 56.5% in the Auckland region, 69.8% in
Wellington and 67.6% nationally (Statistics New Zealand, 2006). The lack
of visible cultural diversity in Christchurch may have meant that
participants in the study were less aware of their whiteness than people
who live in other areas of New Zealand.
Implications
There are a number of implications arising from this thesis. Most
obviously, as white people, we need to consider the consequences of
uncritically proclaiming a Pakeha identity. If, as this thesis suggests, a
Pakeha identity is used to convey a relationship with Maori then the
inequity in this relationship needs also to be acknowledged. Not doing so
risks maintaining white privilege by ignoring the differential in power that
exists between Maori and non Maori in this country. Furthermore, if this
relationship is used to create a sense of separation from other white
people in New Zealand, then this risks obscuring and subsequently
strengthening the privilege which I argue is shared, albeit to different
degrees, by all white New Zealanders.
While analysis has focused on the participants as individuals, it is not my
intention to consign the responsibility for change solely at an individual
level. Although as individuals we each bear responsibility for
understanding whiteness and privilege, patterns of privilege are
maintained at a much deeper level, within the institutions through which
120
this country distributes resources and wealth. As cited earlier in this
thesis, the report Puao te Ata tu maintained that these institutions “do not
serve Maori people but they do clearly serve the great bulk of Pakeha
people” (Ministerial Advisory Committee on a Maori Perspective for the
Department of Social Welfare, 1986, p. 78). As the evidence highlighted in
Chapter Six suggests, little appears to have changed in the decades since
this report was published.
Considering my own reflexive process draws attention to a further
implication of this research; that educational programmes teaching about
the colonisation of this country need also to emphasise its consequences
for white people. My decision to identify as Pakeha was an outcome of
encountering material concerning the European settlement of New
Zealand. While engaging intellectually with this material helped me begin
to understand its detrimental impact on Maori, my studies did not require
me to consider the corollary to this – that as a white person, the legacy of
colonisation has offered me both supremacy and institutional privilege.
Stuart Hall (1993, p. 136) wrote of going through “the long, important,
political education of discovering that I am ‘black’”. This research suggests
that for white people the politics of whiteness also needs to be a focus of
bicultural education in New Zealand. Without understanding the role of
whiteness in our lives we may struggle to understand the privileges we
can access simply through being white. These privileges are not options
we can choose to take or leave. We have been granted them on the basis
that we belong to the dominant white majority and are practitioners of
dominant white culture. The challenge then for Pakeha is to find an
expression of support for Maori that does not risk obfuscating the material
reality of white privilege in New Zealand.
121
Appendices
Appendix A: Consent Form for Participants
Appendix B: Information Sheet for Participants
Appendix C: Interview Question Guide
Appendix D: Transcription Code and Writing Conventions
Appendix E: Ethics Approval Letter
122
Appendix A: Consent Form for Participants
Claire Gray Masters Student Human Services Programme School of Social and Political Sciences Tel: +64 3 364-3606, Fax: + 64 364 2498 Web site: http://www.saps.canterbury.ac.nz/ Email: [email protected] Supervisor: Jim Anglem Email:[email protected]
Consent Form
Project title: Exploring the (in)visibility of Pakeha whiteness
I have read and understood the information sheet concerning the above-
mentioned project. I agree to participate as a subject in the project, and I consent
to publication of the results with the understanding that my anonymity will be
preserved. I understand also that I may withdraw myself and my information
from the project at any time prior to analysis of the data.
Name:
Signature:
This project has been reviewed and approved by the University of Canterbury HEC low risk process
123
Appendix B: Information Sheet for Participants
Claire Gray Masters Student Human Services Programme School of Social and Political Sciences Tel: +64 3 364-3606, Fax: + 64 364 2498 Web site: http://www.saps.canterbury.ac.nz/ Email: [email protected] Supervisor: Jim Anglem Email:[email protected]
Information Sheet
My name is Claire Gray and I am a Masters student in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the
University of Canterbury. As part of my thesis, I am conducting research with white New Zealanders who
choose to identify as Pakeha. There are a number of identifiers available to us as white New Zealanders
(for example; Pakeha, European, Caucasian, Kiwi, New Zealander) and I am interested in exploring the
meaning behind the choice of the word Pakeha. Alongside this, I am also interested in gaining an
understanding of how whiteness and privilege operate in New Zealand society.
Your involvement in this project will consist of a discussion with me that will take approximately one hour.
If you are willing, I may also contact you again in the future for a follow up discussion. I will record our
conversations and take some notes. I will also be responsible for transcribing the data and you will have
the opportunity to review the transcript. To ensure your anonymity, pseudonyms will be used when the
data is transcribed and any information that could be used to identify you will be removed from the
transcripts. The written transcripts and interview files will be stored electronically and password protected.
Your name and contact details will be stored separately from the research data in a password protected
electronic file. Research records will be stored for the required five years and then destroyed.
Completed theses are made available in the University of Canterbury library and can be accessed
electronically via the University of Canterbury Library website.
Thank you for agreeing to participate. I am really excited to be conducting this research and hope that
you will enjoy being part of the research process.
This project has been reviewed and approved by the University of Canterbury
HEC low risk process University of Canterbury Private Bag 4800, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand.
www.canterbury.ac.nz
124
Appendix C: Interview Question Guide
Topic A: Identifying as Pakeha
Can you talk me through why you have chosen to identify as Pakeha?
Is it meaningful for you to identify as such or is it just a label to put on, for
example, a census form?
What do the labels white, Pakeha, European, Caucasian, New Zealander, kiwi
mean to you?
Are there any other labels that you use to identify yourself in ethnic terms? Are
these labels more appropriate to some situations than others?
Are there any that you would not feel comfortable using?
How do your friends and family identify?
Is there something different about your experiences compared to theirs that has
led you to make the decision to call yourself a Pakeha?
How you think that those that don’t identify as Pakeha would respond to hearing
you identify yourself as Pakeha?
What do you think you have in common with people who identify as European in
terms of values and beliefs?
How have your views about what it means to be Pakeha changed over time?
Topic B: Whiteness
How does the label Pakeha compare with the label ‘white’?
Do you think that being ‘white’ means only the colour of your skin? Why or why
not? In comparison then do you think that Pakeha means only the colour of your
skin? Why or why not?
Would you rather be referred to as a “white woman/man” or a “Pakeha
woman/man”? Can you tell me more about this preference? Would your
preference change depending on who was doing the calling? E.g. a Maori person
vs. a Pakeha? Someone who wasn’t a New Zealander?
If we were to think about whiteness in an international context – do you think
what white New Zealanders share any commonalities with white people from
other countries for example Australia, United States or Britain?
125
Do you think therefore that there might be a white culture? What might it be
made up of? Do you associate with that? Is this your culture?
Michael King, the New Zealand historian, wrote that the terms black and white
are irrelevant to New Zealand and New Zealanders. Do you agree with him? Can
you say some more about that?
Topic C: White Privilege
Do you think that white privilege exists in New Zealand? Can you think of any
examples of the way it operates?
What do you think is the effect of this?
To what degree do you think that Pakeha New Zealanders feel they have privilege
in New Zealand? Is that the way that you feel too?
Do you feel that your life has been made easier because you are Pakeha? In what
ways?
Do you feel privileged? In what ways?
What would your life be like if did not have privilege?
Is there anything further that you would like to add?
126
Appendix D: Transcription Code
CAPITALISATION Indicates words emphasised by participants
… Indicates omitted words
[ ] Indicates alterations made in order to increase
clarity and grammatical flow
((Laughter)) Indicates demonstrative expressions
127
Appendix E: Ethics Approval Letter
Ref: HEC 2010/84/LR
10 November 2010
Claire Gray
School of Social Work & Human Services
UNIVERSITY OF CANTERBURY
Dear Claire
Thank you for forwarding to the Human Ethics Committee a copy of the low risk
application you have recently made for your research proposal “White privilege:
exploring the (in)visibility of Pakeha whiteness”.
I am pleased to advise that this application has been reviewed and I confirm
support of the Department’s approval for this project.
This approval is subject to the following:
Please add the supervisor’s name and details to both forms.
Please add the statement regarding the thesis availability and access
from the consent form to the information sheet.
Please add directed space for participants to write and sign their name
on the consent form.
128
Please add to both forms that the project has been reviewed and
approved by the University of Canterbury HEC low risk process.
With best wishes for your project.
Yours sincerely
Dr Michael Grimshaw
Chair, Human Ethics Committee
129
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